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The Elizabethan Hamlet

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

A Study of the Sources, and of Shakspere's

Environment, to show that the Mad Scenes

had a Comic Aspect now Ignored

With a Prefatory Note by
F. YORK POWELL

Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford

Published in London by ELKIN MATHEWS
Vigo Street W. : and in New York by
CHARLES SCRIBNER-S SONS Fifth Avenue

U rights nstrvid

TO MY MOTHER

A Prefatory Note

Mr. 'John Corbin, of Harvard and Oxford, asJ(s
me to put a word or two at the front of his Essay. I
have no special authority to spea^ on the subject, but I do
not wish to decline his hospitality. When he showed me
his worf^ and we talked it over, it seemed to me that he
had got hold of a truth that has not been clearly, if at
all, expressed in our Elizabethan studies — to wit, that
the i6th century audience's point of view, and, of neces
sity, the playwright's treatment of his subject, were very
different from ours of to-day in many matters of mar^.
Just as the impossibility of getting women actors on the
Globe stage must have cramped and hampered in some
respects the dramatist's presentment of women, and tended
to make him emphasize certain convenient types of feminine
character, and omit or but briefly touch on others, thus
affecting the drama as a complete presentment of life, so
the attitude of an Elizabethan audience towards physical
pain and mania has affected the plays of Shaf(spere and
Webster and others in a way that is apt to puzzle the
modern critic, especially if he be unfamiliar with the
drama of other days and other lands. Hence, though I
have had nothing to do with Mr. Corbirfs conception of

PREFATORY NOTE

or treatment of his subject, and have never given any
direction to his studies, I am so far responsible for the
present book that I advised him to print his Essay, as
his contribution to the study of a great subject ; and this
responsibility I hereby acknowledge.

F. TORK POWELL

Oriel College, Oxford
Jan., 1895

viii

The Elizabethan Hamlet

THE sense of Hamlet's reality has so im- FOREWORD
pressed the critics that almost all of them
write as if he were an actual person, a re
cently deceased acquaintance ; and assume
that, if they fail to reach a solution of the
problem his character presents, the fault
must of necessity lie in their analysis. But
Hamlet's reality is scarcely more remarkable
than the inconsistencies that, in spite of the
faith and zeal of the critics, have prevented
them from agreeing as to his character. One The opposing
man considers Hamlet great intellectually,
but malevolent ; another takes him to be gentle
and just, but lacking in courage; a third thinks
that, though he is not lacking in courage, his
intellect so overbalances his will that he re
flects away the time for action ; some hold
him quite sane, others make him wholly dis
traught : so that though all are impressed with
the reality of his character, hardly anyone is

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

satisfied with another's interpretation. Yet it is
to be noted that, contradictory as the interpre
tations are, they are to an amazing degree
based on the facts of the play. To one critic,
for instance, the marvellously vivid treat
ment of the Ghost is convincing evidence that
Hamlet is the great precursor of nineteenth
century spiritualistic faith. But, in spite of
not inconsis- his oath to remember his father's spirit, —

tent with the

text; Remember thee ?

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe, —

he thinks of the hereafter only as

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns.

Another critic is obviously quite as well jus
tified in finding Hamlet the precursor of
modern speculative doubt. One or two such
contradictions would not, of course, be hard
to reconcile ; but they are legion, and it is
notorious that no hypothesis, however well
founded on the facts of the play, has succeeded
in reconciling all of them.

To the historical student of Elizabethan
literature the question must arise whether

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

this disagreement does not spring in part at
least from a want of knowledge of such mun- A possible rea-
dane facts in Shakspere's life — the character ^r
of his audiences, and the conventional Eliza
bethan methods of play writing — as inevitably
influence a dramatist's productions. We have
Shakspere's own testimony, in the Sonnets,
to the narrowness and hardship of his life
and calling. He was a popular playwright in
an age when the drama was as little reputable
as our variety stage ; and similarly Hamlet
was a popular tale told and re-told during
four centuries, possessing scant literary and
certainly no philosophical significance. Too
little emphasis has been laid on this. The
purpose of this essay is to study the play
from the point of view of the gallants and
'prentices for whom Richard Burbage acted
it, — to revivify the Elizabethan Hamlet.

The discussion will fall into five chief
divisions. I shall consider first the Eliza- The thesis out-
bethan sources of Shakspere's story. From hned-
these I shall hope to show not only that
Hamlet was originally a crude tragedy of
blood ; but also that certain phases of the story

— notably Hamlet's madness — were treated
more comically in the versions preceding
Shakspere's Hamlet than we can readily con
ceive. This will suggest my second consi
deration, a study of the comic sense of
Elizabethan audiences, the actual public for
which Shakspere wrote. This consideration
will, I hope, confirm the first : it will show
that to Shakspere's contemporaries many
things — insanity, torture, and the like — now
held repulsive or even tragic, were conven
tionally amusing ; and that consequently in
the pre-Shaksperean play Hamlet's madness
must have been an actual source of mirth.
Thirdly, I shall consider certain peculiar
features of Shakspere's environment and me
thods in writing which make it unlikely that
he effaced wholly the traditional comic treat
ment of Hamlet's madness. This will lead
to my fourth division, an exposition of certain
of the most important scenes in old plays
where madness is treated as a source of
mirth, and of similar scenes in Shakspere.
In my fifth and final division I shall present
whatever evidence I shall have gathered

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

showing that there are distinct traces in the
Hamlet familiar to modern readers of the
comic treatment of madness, even in some of
those scenes which from a modern point of
view are most deeply tragic. Such a demon
stration as I have outlined would account for
the divergent views of the critics, and pave
the way to a well grounded study of Shak-
spere's meaning.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

PRE-SHAK- The ultimate source of the plot of

Hamlet is a tale in the Historic Danica of
Saxo Grammaticus, who wrote as early as
the twelfth century. Other early versions are
found, but the earliest known to Shakspere
was probably the prose Hystorie of Hamblet,
which was written, in French, by Belleforest,
in 1570. On the basis of this Hystorie an
English play was written not later than 1589.
This play is now lost ; but we have two plays
which were founded directly upon it. The
first of these is a German version, Fratricide
Punished, and the second is Shakspere's
earliest extant version, the first quarto Hamlet.
This was printed piratically in 1603. In the
following year the second quarto was printed
authentically. This is to all intents and pur
poses the modern Hamlet.

The Hystorie of Hamblet was thus
written thirty-odd years before Shakspere's
first quarto ; and there is little doubt that it

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

was translated into English almost imme
diately, so great was its popularity. The
earliest extant edition, moreover, is dated
1608, four years later than Shakspere's second
quarto. Its popularity, accordingly, was not
only immediate but, in spite of the success of
the play on the same subject, was sustained.
This fact will be of the utmost importance in
judging of the influence it exerted on the
dramatic versions of the story. No better
brief summary of it can be given than that
contained in the headings of the chapters,
and in the marginal notes. These I have
combined, inserting here and there a word to
explain the narrative by connecting it with
Shakspere's Hamlet ; but I have kept as far
as possible to the literal wording of the
original.

'CiiAP. I. How Horvendile [King Hamlet]^- riu^Hys-
and Fengon [Claudius] were made Governours
of the Province of Ditmarse, and how Hor-
vendile marryed Geruth, [Queen Gertrude]
the daughter to [the] chief K. of Denmark,
by whom he had Hamblet : and how after
his marriage his brother Fengon slewe him

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

trayterously, and incestuously marryed his
brothers wife, and what followed.

' CHAP. II. How Hamblet counterfeited
the mad man, making many subtill answeres
to escape the tyrannic of his uncle, and how
he was tempted by a woman (through his
uncles procurement) who thereby thought to
undermine the Prince, and by that meanes
to finde out whether he counterfeited mad-
nesse or not : and how Hamblet wrould by
no meanes bee brought to consent unto her,
and what followed.

' CHAP. III. How Fengon [Claudius],
uncle to Hamblet, a second time to intrap
him in his politick madnes, caused one of his
counsellors [Polonius] to be secretly hidden
in the queenes chamber, behind the arras, to
heare what speeches passed between Hamblet
and the Queen ; and how Hamblet killed
him, and escaped that danger, and what
followed.

'CHAP. IIII. How Fengon [Claudius]
the third time devised to send Hamblet to
the king of England, with secret letters to
have him put to death : and how Hamblet,

when his companions [Rosencrantz and Guil-
denstern] slept, read the letters, and instead
of them counterfeited others, willing the
king of England to put the two messengers
to death, and to marry his daughter to
Hamblet, which was effected ; and how
Hamblet escaped out of England.

' CHAP. V. How Hamblet, having es
caped out of England, arrived in Denmarke
the same day that the Danes were celebra
ting his funerals, supposing him to be dead
in England ; and how he revenged his
fathers death upon his uncle and the rest
of the courtiers ; and what followed.'

Some idea of the inexpressible brutality atak°f

r i • i i i • i r •• murder and

of this story may be had in the tew citations revenge,
for which I have space. The importance of
these passages will lie in the fact that the
Hystorie afforded the ground-plan upon
which the lost play was constructed. The
feigned madness of Hamblet is thus described:
' Every day beeing in the queenes palace,
. . . hee rent and tore his clothes, wal
lowing and lying in the durt and mire, his
face all filthy and blacke, running through

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

the streets like a man distraught, not speak
ing one worde, but such as seemed to proceede
of madnesse and meere frenzie ; all his actions
and jestures beeing no other than the right
countenances of a man wholly deprived of
all reason and understanding, in such sort,
that as then hee seemed fitte for nothing but
to make sport to the pages and ruffling cour
tiers that attended in the court of his uncle
and father-in-law.' Hamblet's revenge is
accomplished as follows : Hamblet ' seeing
those drunken bodies, filled with wine, lying
like hogs upon the ground, some sleeping,
others vomiting the over great abundance of
wine which without measure they had swal
lowed up, made the hangings about the hall
to fall downe and cover them all over ; which
he nailed to the ground ... in such
sort, that ... it was unpossible to get
from under them : and presently he set fire
in the foure corners of the hal, in such sort,
that all that were as then therein not one
escaped away, but were forced to purge their
sins by fire, and dry up the great abundance
of liquor by them received into their bodies.'

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

This revenge he completed by giving the
King 'such a blowe upon the chine of the
necke, that hee cut his head cleane from his
shoulders.'

The probable influence of such passages
upon the play may best be explained by
reference to one of the most striking conven
tions of Elizabethan tragedy, the comic
underplot. The necessity of blending the
humorous with the pathetic — so thoroughly
acknowledged by modern writers — was
dimly recognized by the earlier English
dramatists. Their first crude device was to
introduce among the tragic events a series
of comic scenes. These were usually quite
distinct from the main action. Many of the
most celebrated old dramas may be divided
into two plays, a pure comedy and an un
mixed tragedy, each complete in itself. Cer
tain of the dramatists, however, and prominent
among them Shakspere, seem to have felt
the awkwardness of this device ; for, instead
of the consistent underplot, they introduced
stray comic scenes having a direct connection
with the main plot, of which the Porter's

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

scene in Macbeth and the Grave Diggers' in
Hamlet are notable instances. They led,
no doubt, to the more artistic method of
mingling comedy and tragedy in the same
scene — of which the serio-comic relationship
between Lear and his Fool is an excellent
example. But this was a later development, —
at the time when the lost play was written it
was unknown.
in which As the Hystorie contained no series of

' scenes upon which to construct a comic under
plot, we must look to its few amusing inci
dents for a hint as to the basis of the comedy
in the lost play. The foul humour of Ham-
blet's mock madness is frankly alleged by the
author to have made ' sport to pages and
ruffling courtiers ; ' and in the account of
Hamblet's revenge upon the courtiers and
upon the King there is a brutal humour, a
savage sarcasm, which any one familiar with
rudimentary human nature will recognize,
revolting as it is to our conventional human
ity. The intelligent playwright could scarce
ly have failed to take the hint to derive his
comedy from these scenes. But herein lies

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

the significant point: If he did so, those supplies the
incidents which in the second quarto, tibe
familiar Hamlet, are most tragic, must, in
the lost play, have had a distinct comic
aspect.

This paradox is even more clearly sug
gested in another scene. A certain lady in
the Hystorie is set to tempt Hamblet carnally
' through his uncles procurement/ in a solitary
wood. It is thus to be discovered, to the lady
and to courtiers in ambush, whether he is really
mad. This is the germ of the Hamlet- Ophelia
scene in Shakspere, which has probably been
more variously interpreted and less understood
than any other tragic scene in literature. The
lady was a ' faire and beawtifull woman ' to
whom the Prince was ' wholy ... in
affection.' As she too had ' from her infancy
loved and favoured him, . . . [she] in
formed [him] of the treason ' intended against
him. Nevertheless, she was ' exceeding
sorrowfull ... to leave his companie
without injoying the pleasure of his body,
whome shee loved more than herselfe,' and
essayed, though in vain, to tempt Hamblet.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

The upshot of all this was that ' the prince in
this sort having both deceived the courtiers,
and the ladyes expectation, that affirmed
and swore that hee never once offered to
have his pleasure of the woman, although in
subtilty hee affirmed the contrary, every man
there upon assured themselves that without
The origin o/a\\ doubt he was distraught of his sences.'
^he situati°n is m a measure obscured by
the lack of the context, and by the involution
of the sentences ; but it is briefly this : When
the lady was eager, Hamblet rebuffed her ;
but when she admitted to the King that
Hamblet had not satisfied her 'expectation,'
he insisted falsely that he had. Either of
these actions was, to the courtiers and the
King, proof positive of his insanity. His
purpose in all this was the very serious one of
escaping the peril in which he lay ; but in
executing it he turned the tables so neatly
on both the ' beawtifull lady ' and the King
that the situation remains to this day vulgar
ly amusing. Yet in the second quarto this
scene is, under our modern interpretation,
one of the most deeply tragic in literature.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

Though this Hystorie is quite alien in
spirit to the second quarto, it contains most,
though not all, of the incidents there. It
probably contains too the suggestions of
others. The inciderit of Hamblet's mock
burial may have suggested the true burial

f-k i «• ' j «• ' r i . ,

Ophelia ; and his successful oration to the
people may have suggested the idea of
making Laertes appear at the head of a
popular insurrection. The incidents the Hys
torie lacks are the play within the play, the
grave-digging scene, and chiefly the idea of
making the murder of Hamblet's father
secret, thus introducing the Ghost.

So much for the Hystorie. We have
now to ascertain as far as possible the
nature of the lost play founded upon \\.> z. The lost play
In the first place, the brutality of the
Hystorie makes it not unlikely that the lost
play was a tragedy of blood — after the kind
of Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, or Shakspere's
Titus Andronicus. In the second place,
the fact that Hamblet's subtly pretended
madness was used throughout the Hystorie
to amuse the reader, even in those scenes

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

antedating

years,

which in the first and second quartos appear
to us most deeply tragic, suggests that they
may have been utilised in the lost play to
supply the lack of comic underplot. It will
at least be interesting to keep an eye open
for evidence upon these two points.

The date of the lost play is fixed by
contemporary allusions as not later than
1 5 89, fourteen years before the publication
of Shakspere's earliest known version.
These allusions give some clue to its charac
ter. Nash, in an epistle prefaced to Greene's
Menaphon, printed in r 589, says, ' English
Seneca read by Candle-light, yeelds many
good sentences, as Blond is a begger, and
so forth : and if you intreate him faire in
a frosty morning, hee will affoord you whole
Hamlets, I should say handfuls of Tragicall
speeches.' In Wits Miserie, 1596, Thomas
Lodge, speaking of an ' incarnate diuel,' says
that he ' looks as pale as the Visard of ye
ghost which cried so miserally at ye Theator
like an oister wife, Hamlet, reuenge' In
Dekker's Satiro-mastix, printed in 1602, the
year previous to the publication of the first

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

quarto, we find : — * Asini. Wod I were
hang'd if I can call you any names but
Captaine and Tucca. Tuc. No Fye'st, my
name's Hamlet reuenge : thou hast been at
Parris garden hast not ? ' This phrase,
' Hamlet, revenge ! ' which Shakspere saw
fit to omit in his version, had made so deep
an impression on the popular mind that
years passed before the extant treatment of
the scene effaced it. In Dekker's Westward
Hoe, published in 1607, four years after the
publication of Shakspere's first quarto, we
find : — ' I but when light Wines make heauy
husbands, let these husbands play mad Ham
let ; and crie reuenge.' So likewise in Row
land's The Night Raven, 1618, fifteen years
after the first quarto :

I will not cry Hamlet Reuenge my greeues,
But I will call Hang-man Reuenge on theeues.

What first strikes one in these allusions
is that in the lost play the Ghost's demand ridiculed for
for revenge impressed the public as blatant ; lts ranf'
and blatancy is very foreign to the moral
dignity of Shakspere's Ghost. The allusions
contain, moreover, a vein of contempt and

17 D

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

satire. In this they resemble nothing so much
as the allusions to certain extant tragedies of
blood, the popularity of which was quite equal
to that of the early Hamlet. For instance,
in the Introduction to Bartholomew Fair,
Ben Jonson says : ' Hee that will sweare, leron-
imo, or Andronicus, are the best playes, yet,
shall passe vnexcepted at, heere, as a man
whose Judgment shewes it is constant, and
hath stood still, these fiue and twentie, or
thirtie yeeres. Though it be an Ignorance,
it is a vertuous and stay'd ignorance ; and
next to truth, a confirm'd errour does well ;
such a one the Author knowes where to finde
him.' The satire of this is obvious. Both
in the phrases from the lost play, and in
and apparently the manner in which they are quoted, we
ab}™/edy °f have very strong confirmation that the play
was a tragedy of blood.

The next step in fixing the character
of the lost play is to study the two extant
versions founded directly upon it, the German
version and the first quarto of Shakspere.
From the point of view of these versions
we shall discover further evidence that the

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

lost play was a tragedy of blood, and more
over, that in it the comic passages I have
pointed out in the Hystorie were used to
supply the place of an underplot.

The German version contains the bloody 3. The Ger-
incidents of the Hystorie so augmented as to man Hamlet
present the main points of the first quarto :
the secret fratricide, the incestuous marriage,
the Ghost, Hamlet's feigned madness, the
play within the play, the voyage to England,
Ophelia's distraction and death, Laertes' re
turn, the foul fencing bout, and the poisoned
drink. The only important scenes omitted are
those between Hamlet and the two courtiers,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the Grave-
diggers' scene, and the scene at Ophelia's
grave.

In spite, however, of this close agree
ment in plot, the play appears, at first reading,
debased beyond all kinship to Elizabethan
literature — so barren of interest, so unutter
ably coarse in every detail, as to be a
thorn in the side of the lover of Shakspere's
Hamlet.

A fair idea of its puerility may be had

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

in the scene which corresponds to the episode,

found in all English versions, of the voyage

to England and the killing of the King's

hopelessly per- emissaries. This episode is presented in the

•verted m seem- Qerman play with a childish striving after

stage effect. Hamlet is represented on an

island, about to be killed at the King's order

by bandits. At the last moment he says :

lHam. Hear me — one word more. . .
I . . beg you to let me raise to my Maker
a fervent prayer ; after that I am ready to die.
But I will give you a signal : I will turn
my hands toward heaven, and the moment I
stretch out my arms, fire! Aim both pistols at
my sides, and when I say " Shoot ! " give me
as much as I need, and be sure to hit me so
that I shall not be long in torture.' . . .
Then ' (spreading out his hands] Shoot !
(throwing himself forward on his face between
the two, who shoot each other). Oh just
Heaven ! thanks be to thee for this angelic
idea ! . But these villains, — as was

their work, so is their pay. The dogs are
still stirring ; they have shot each other.
But out of revenge I will give them a death-

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

blow to make sure . . . (Stabs them, with
their own swords).' Act IV., Scene I.

The treatment of the Ghost offers a
similar instance. The First Sentinel, as he
leaves the platform, admits that he has been
frightened by a ghost, and is glad enough to e.g. Hamlet's
P-Q home. The second sentinel makes fun of es^e: and the

i • i 11- ir i <-r-i Ghost scene,

him, but is presently himself overtaken. I he
Majesty of buried Denmark 'from behind
gives him a box on the ear, and makes him
drop his musket, and exit' ' The devil him
self is after me,' he exclaims. ' Oh, I am so
frightened, I can't stir ! ' Act /., Scene n.

In both of these scenes, and to a like
degree throughout the play, the tragic inci
dents of Shakspere's Hamlet are told with
an eye to comic effect, and we have the
anomaly of a tragedy of blood, crude and
revolting, in which the majority of the scenes
are given an element of horseplay, or sport.

There is in this fact at least a suggestion
of kinship to the Hystorie of Hamblet.
And a close study of the text will show
that the remoteness of the German version
from Shakspere's versions is chiefly in seem-

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

ing. To begin with, this very scene con
tains the Ghost's famous speeches from the
'cellarage,' — 'Sweare. Sweare.' — those 'sub
terraneous speeches ' which, in Shakspere,
Coleridge found 'hardly defensible'; and the
comic treatment of the Ghost is recalled in
Shakspere's 'Well said, old Mole, can'st worke
in the earth ? so fast.' This phrase, and other
similar ones in the same scene, Moberly calls
' a strange and baffling jest/ and Coleridge ' a
wild transition to the ludicrous.' The German
version taken as a whole, moreover, contains
sufficient points in common with Shakspere's
versions to convince the critics that it is
more nearly related to the first than to the
second quarto, and to the lost version than
to either. As most of the evidence of this
is textual, we need not linger over it. There
are one or two points of resemblance, how
ever, that will later be extremely significant
of the peculiar character of the lost play, and
of the extent to which it was related to the
first quarto.

In the German version, in the scene
between Hamlet and Ophelia where the King

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

and his Counsellor are secretly listening,
Hamlet feigns madness as in the first quarto,
but the treatment of the scene is as follows :

' Oph. I pray your highness to take back
the jewel which you presented to me.

'Ham. What, girl ! wouldst thou have
a husband ? Get thee away from me ; nay,
come here. Hearken, girl, you young women
do nothing but lead young fellows astray.
Your beauty you buy of the apothecaries and
peddlers. Listen, I will tell you a story.
There was a cavalier in Anion who fell in
love with a lady, who, to look at, was the
goddess Venus. However, when bedtime
came, the bride went first and began to un
dress herself. First, she took out an eye
which had been set in very cunningly ; then
her front teeth, made of ivory, so cleverly
that the like were not to be seen ; then she
washed herself, and off went all the paint
with which she had smeared herself. At last,
when the bridegroom came and thought to
embrace her, the moment he saw her he
started back, and thought it was a spectre.
And thus it is that you deceive the young

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

fellows ; therefore listen to me. But stay,

girl ! No, go to a nunnery, but not to a

vet having stri- nunnery where two pairs of slippers lie at

king points in fa bedside. \Exit.

common with / r-» r • \ T i ri

the lost play; ' Cor. (Polomus). Is he not perfectly and

veritably mad, gracious lord and King ?

'King. Corambus, leave us. . . \_Exit
Corambus^\ . . It seems to us that this is
not genuine madness, but rather a feigned
madness.' Act //., Scene IV.

This is hardly a literal rendering of the
episode in the Hystorie; but in spirit it is
precisely similar. In both versions Hamlet,
in order to escape the espionage of the King,
hoaxes Ophelia under the guise of madness ;
and in both the humour is, according to modern
standards, indecent. The difference between
the two, moreover, is merely that which must
necessarily have existed between the narra
tive and the dramatic version of such an
episode, for even in pre-Shaksperean Eng
land the passage in the Hystorie could not
have been represented literally on the Stage.
The scene is, to be sure, totally different in
spirit from our conception of the parallel

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

scene in the first quarto. Yet it has points
of similarity that in the scientific study of
literature pass for more than such arguments
as appeal merely to the aesthetic or moral
senses. It has certain striking words and
phrases that recur almost literally in Shak-
spere. ' Your beauty you buy of the apothe
caries and peddlers,' is the Shaksperean
Hamlet's ' I haue heard of your paintings
too, God has giuen you one face, And you
make your selues another.' ' To a Nunnery
goe,' is identical ; and there are other expres
sions, to be discussed later, which read like
paraphrases of Shakspere.

All this has an important bearing upon
the lost play : It is beyond the remotest pos
sibility that so many speeches should by mere
chance be identical in both the versions to
which it gave rise, the German and the Shak- and being in
sperean Hamlets. The proof is positive that
in letter and in spirit the lost play had vastly
more in common with the German version
than at first appears.

The three versions thus far discussed,
the Hystorie, the lost play, and the German

25 E

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

play, form, it is now evident, a closely con-
The points of nected series. I have shown that in the
similarity. fa^ an(j ^{^ members of the series certain

scenes were amusing which in the first quarto
and second quarto appear quite serious.
The hypothesis that in the intermediate
version, the lost play, these scenes were
amusing is, to say the least, worthy of further
discussion.

The evidence of Shakspere's first quarto
upon the lost play, and upon the comic ele
ment I have supposed in it, is now in order.
The character of the first quarto as a whole
may best be shown by stating first in what
respects it resembles Shakspere's final version,
and then in what it differs from this. The
4. Shakspere's two quartos are alike in seriousness and ele-

^t version: ^^ Qf ^^ ^^ story ^ Hamlet OUt-

witted the factors of the King is told with
fitting sobriety and probability. The Ghost
is essentially a poetic creation, and full of
ghostly dignity. Hamlet's pretended mad
ness strikes us as shrewd and trenchant ; but
apparently those scenes in which it gives rise
to comic or amusing situations have to do only

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

with Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern
—characters feebly developed in the German
play — and with Osric, upon whom Hamlet
repeats in a bettered form the mad jests which
in the German version he played off on a cer
tain Phantasmo. When Hamlet speaks to its resemblance
Ophelia, it is apparently with predominant to.thefitial'ver-
seriousness and tragic effect. In only one
passage is there the least suggestion of
comedy.

'Ham. Where's thy father ?

lOfel. At home my lord.

'Ham. For Gods sake let the doores be
shut on him,

He may play the foole no where but in his

Owne house : to a Nunnery goe.' Line 873.
The fact that Polonius is 'close in the study,'
straining to catch what Hamlet says, gives this
speech an inevitably comic aspect. Still under
no circumstances could the scene as a whole in
the first quarto strike us, from a modern point
of view, as anything but essentially tragic.

Having conjectured that in the old play
this and other similar scenes bore a largely
comic character, we are forced, at least for the

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

present, to assume that Shakspere sacrificed
this almost completely. This supposition, it
must be admitted, is confirmed by the fact that
in Hamlet's scenes of feigned madness with
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — not found in
the German versions — and with Polonius —
barely suggested there — we find enough of
wit and of comedy of character to compen
sate for the predominant seriousness of the
once comic scenes.

its points of Passing to the differences between Shak-

Spere's two quartos, we find that in the first
quarto, though the incidents and scenes are
the same, the phrasing is far less finished and
beautiful. The character of Hamlet, more
over, is fully conceived only where he is in
action. The contemplative side is barely sug
gested. In fine, the first quarto, though a very
good acting play, lacks all that makes Hamlet
Hamlet. By no possibility can we take the
Prince to be more than a dignified stage ren
dering of the crude Hamblet of the Hystorie.
The first quarto, as several of the critics have
said, is to be regarded not so much as an
early bit of Shakspere's workmanship as the

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

work of a very inferior artist. Clarke and

Wright conclude that it is 'an older play,'

composed of a distinctly tragic treatment of

the incidents of both the German version and

the Hystorie ; but that it is still 'in a tran- its dose reia-

sition state ; . . .it was undergoing a re- tionshiP to the

i 11- \ 11 i & & i lost play.

modelling, but had not received more than
the first rough touches of the great master's
hand.' If we knew no other Shaksperean
version than the first quarto, there would be
little or nothing paradoxical in supposing that
the most serious episodes in which Hamlet
moves had, in the lost play upon which it was
founded, been wilfully buffooned.

We have now at hand the chief facts
that bear upon the lost play. The main
features of its source, the Hystorie, we found,
were a series of incidents such as a dramatist
would be likely to choose for a tragedy of
blood ; and the allusions to the lost play
strengthen the supposition. There was no
suggestion of a comic underplot ; but there
was interwoven with the tragic incidents a
series of partly amusing situations brought
about by the fact that the hero, though sane,

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

was expected to act the madman ; and these
were of a character to supply the place of
comic underplot in the lost play. In the Ger
man Hamlet, which was based upon the lost
play, we found that the bloodily tragic inci
dents, — contained also, presumably, in the lost
play, — were debased and considerably aug
mented. Moreover, the comic treatment of all
phases of Hamlet's pretended madness, which,
judging from the character of the Hystorie,
might have afforded the comic relief to the
lost play, was likewise reproduced. Upon
this fact we founded the hypothesis that they
were similarly treated in the lost play.
When we came to Shakspere's first quarto —
the lost play remodelled — we found the same
bloodily tragic incidents ; but they were
treated with greater sobriety and artistic re
serve ; while several of the scenes which, in
the Hystorie and the German version, had
been used to enliven the gloom, no longer
appeared comic. Still even in these scenes
there were distinct traces of the old comic
treatment.

From the data thus summarised no con-

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

elusion is admissible that would not make the
lost play a tragedy of blood. Nor does it
take the ghost of the lost play to tell us this.
A number of the critics have observed that
Hamlet presents an aspect which throws it
back into the school of The Spanish Tragedy ;
and the most recent work on this subject,
Gregor Sarrazin's Thomas Kyd and his Cir
cle, which has come to me since writing the
foregoing, proves beyond reasonable doubt
that the lost play was by Kyd ; was con
ceived as a companion piece to Jeronimo
and The Spanish Tragedy ; and contained, in
a slightly altered form, the events and situa
tions of both of these plays. Likewise no
conclusion is admissible that would make the
prince Hamlet of the lost play anything but
a person who feigned madness to escape the
jealousy of a usurping uncle ; and our evi
dence would forbid our regarding this feigned
madness as of such a nature that it could not
be turned to comic effect in the less tragic
scenes. Even on this point we might say to
the ghost of the lost play : ' Rest, rest, per
turbed spirit ! ' for we have the combined

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

testimony of Dr. Maginn and Dr. Johnson that
this is the case even with Shakspere's final
version. ' I doubt if ... the English
vulgar . . . could abide [Hamlet] with
out . . . having Polonius buffooned for
him, and, to no small extent, Hamlet himself ;
as he always was whenever I saw the part
played, and as the great critic, Dr Johnson,
would seem to think he ought to be. For
he says, "the pretended madness of Hamlet
causes much -mirth ! / / "

The really significant facts in the evi
dence gathered thus far relate to the comic
aspect of Hamlet's madness in those scenes
which in our familiar version appear purely
tragic. In the Hystorie, Hamblet's most
bestial pretence of madness amused ' pages
s mad- and ruffling courtiers,' and in the episode
with the 'beawtifull lady' he used his sham
madness as a stalking-horse for a most
outrageous bit of hoaxing. In the German
version, the scene founded upon this episode
with the ' beawtifull lady ' bears a precisely
similar spirit of vulgar mirth ; and the action
of the scene differs only as it would neces-

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

sarily differ in a dramatic handling. In the
first quarto, although the spirit is apparently
quite different, there is in this scene and
elsewhere a close verbal relationship with
the German version ; and there is also some
slight trace of comedy. All this suggests
my main hypothesis, and at the same time
powerfully substantiates it, namely, that in
the lost play Hamlet's feigned madness bore
a comic aspect in certain of those scenes
which, as they appear in the modern Hamlet,
strike us as most deeply tragic.

This hypothesis presumes in Elizabethan
audiences an attitude toward acts of cruelty
and insanity which is incredible to any one
brought up amid the sensibility of modern
life. Yet there is much evidence that it is
thoroughly in accord with the characteristics
of Elizabethan England and of the Elizabe
than Drama. Until this state of things is
made clear, the discussion of the comic
element in Shakspere's first quarto must
wait.

THE BRU- It is a fact too often forgotten that bear

ELIZABETHAN baiting was a national sport with our fore-

ENGLAND fathers, and that the merriment of their dinner

tables was supplied by idiots and madmen.

Hentzner, a German who visited England in

1598, describes the manner of bear baiting.

' There is still another place,' he records,
' built in the form of a Theatre, which serves
for the baiting of Bulls and Bears, they are
fastned behind, and then worried by great
English bull-dogs ; but not without great risque
to the dogs, from the horns of the one, and the
teeth of the other ; and it sometimes happens
they are killed upon the spot ; fresh ones are
immediately supplied in the places of those
that are wounded, or tired. To this entertain-
4 Traleisf ment, there often follows that of whipping a
blinded bear, which is performed by five or six
men, standing circularly with whips, which they
exercise upon him without any mercy, as he
cannot escape from them because of his chain ;

he defends himself with all his force and skill,
throwing down all who come within his reach,
and are not active enough to get out of it, and
tearing the whips out of their hands, and break
ing them.'

Such were the pastimes of our ancestors ;
but whether the brutality of the spectacle Bear baiting.
made serious sport, like the unexampled
physical strain of an University boat-race, or
whether it provoked laughter, is not stated.
In the bear-baiting it seems natural to assume
that the element of serious sport predominated.
As for the spectacle of five or six men scuff
ling and tussling with a blinded bear, this
supposition scarcely holds. Spectators to
whom the combats of dogs and tied bears
was serious sport could hardly have been
above hearty laughter when an unwary fellow
was sent sprawling by a cuff on the side of
the head.

About the humorous delight in madmen
there is no possibility of doubt. A passage
already quoted from the Hystorie shows that
Hamblet's madness was considered fit sport
for 'pages and ruffling courtiers;' and in a

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

The Court Fool quaint volume called 1A Nest of Ninnies,
abcm&fdc Simply of themselues without Compound,' we
have superabundant evidence that partial and
even total insanity amused the Elizabethans.
The book is by one Robert Armin, — a pro
fessional, who was certainly a member of
Shakspere's company, and probably at times
took the part of Dogberry. A thorough
understanding of the position which the idiots
Armin describes occupied in the Elizabethan
household can be attained — if at all — only by
reading the entire volume ; but the following
siftings must serve.

'A kinde gentleman . . . had a foole,
Leonard they call him. . . . The Gentle
man . . . hauing bought a goodly fayre
Hawke, brought her home, being not a little
proud of his penny-worth, and at Supper to
other Gentlemen, fell a praysing of her. . . .
Leonard standing by with his finger in his
mouth, as it was his custome, often hearing
them praise the goodnesse of the Hawke,
thought indeede they had meant for goodnesse
being farre better meate then a Turkey or a
Swan, was very desirous to eate of the same :

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

and vnknowne goes downe, and sodainely from ArmMs lNest
the pearch snatch the Hawke, and hauing °fNinnies-
wrung off her neck, begins to besiedge that good
morsell, but with so good a courage, that the
feathers had almost choakt him : but there lay
my friend Leonard in a lamentable taking.
Well, the Hawke was mist, and the deede was
found, the Maister was fecht, and al men
might see the Hawk, feathers and all not
very wel disgested : there was no boote to bid
runne for drams to driue downe thisvndisgested
moddicome : the Gentleman of the one side,
cryed hang the Foole, the Foole on the other
side cryed not, but made signes that his Hawke
was not so good as hee did praise her for : and
though the Gentleman loued his Hawke, yet he
loued the Foole aboue : being enforced rather
to laugh at his simplicitie, then to vere at his
losses sodainely : Being glad to make himselfe
merry, jested on it ever after/

A more pitiable fool was Jack Miller, whom
Armin says he knew personally. This Miller
stuttered frightfully, and one of his most ludic
rous performances was to sing songs full of diffi
cult consonants. Once when he was amusing a

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

table of 'Gallants and Gentlewomen, almost the
state of the Country,' there was a lady present
who seems to have had our modern sense of
the impropriety of laughing. That she was
very far in advance of her century, however,
is evident in Armin's narrative of the way her
sense of propriety was brought into ridicule.

' The Gallants and Gentlewomen . . .
A lady in especially . . . entreated him for his new
fer Cfetftoy. sPeacn of the Pees : which he began in such
manner to speake, with driueling and stutter
ing, that they began mightely to laugh : inso
much that one proper Gentlewoman among the
rest, because shee would not seeme too immo
dest with laughing : for such is the humour of
many, that thinke to make all, when God knowes
they marre all : so shee, straining her selfe,
though inwardly she laughed hartely, gaue
out such an earnest of her modesty, that all
the Table rung of it. Who is that, sayes one ?
Not I, sayes another : but by her cheeks you
might find guilty Gilbert, where he had hid
the brush. . . . Thus simple Jack made
mirth to all, made the wisest laugh, but to
this day gathered little wit to himselfe.'

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

In the facts here brought forward there
is nothing new ; but any one who has read
far in criticism of the Elizabethan drama will
testify that an analysis has not yet been made
of the archaic taste in comedy which such
primitive humor implied. I have already
shown by the internal evidence of the three
early versions of the story that in the lost
play the (to us) cruel acts of madness, in such
scenes as the Hamlet-Ophelia scene for in
stance, were probably meant by the playwright
to be amusing. It is obvious in the evidence
just presented that such a treatment would have
been precisely in accordance with the tastes
of the Elizabethans. Henceforth I shall take
it for proved that, in the lost play, the Hamlet- Ha
Ophelia scene was treated with at least one "e,ss ,co™tc, tn

re -ru ^-11 the lost play.

eye to comic effect. 1 hose who are still un
convinced I shall leave to consider parallel
scenes, to be presented by and by, which were
written by Shakspere's contemporaries, and
even by Shakspere himself. For the present
I shall attempt to estimate the influence of the
lost play in general, and of the scenes of archaic
comedy in particular, upon the first quarto.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

III

THE INFLU
ENCE OF

SOURCES

The influence of the lost play would, of
SHAKSPERE'S course, have been very slight indeed if Shak-
spere were in the habit of remodelling care
fully and thoroughly the plots upon which he
worked. If, however, he were accustomed to
work hastily, merely rephrasing scenes which
he found already made to his hand, the influ
ence would have been far from slight. The
evidence on this point is fortunately well
authenticated and digested. That Shakspere
took his plots from older plays and novels,
and often took them in toto, is a commonplace
of the primers. All but two of the thirty-seven
extant plays are known to have been thus con
structed. The hasty and hap-hazard way in
which Elizabethan playwrights worked is also
well known. Henslowe's famous diary attests
that the audiences of the time required a new
play about every eighteen days on an average,
including Sundays, and that the rapidity with
which plays were written is most remarkable

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

This is shown beyond dispute by the portions The rewriting
of the diary where, among- other charges, °fPjays has'y

, ' . ' *=> i and h-ap-

Henslowe registers the sums paid to play- hazard.
wrights, the dates of the payment, and the
authors who received the money. Nothing
was more common than for two and even
three or four dramatists to work together on
one play. All this is as far as possible from the
manner of writing such modern plays or novels
as are in the least comparable with the best
work of the Elizabethans.

It is also fairly well established that
Shakspere often retouched and developed his
work after the first ' run.' Different quartos
of several of the plays show various readings
which indicate this ; and of two plays at least,
Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, we have two
widely different Shaksperean versions. This
evidence is particularly significant in view of
the fact that no play was ever willingly given
out in print until it had died a natural death
on the boards. That we have even these two
first drafts is due to accident, for they were
pirated, as were several of the quartos that
give various readings. If the pirates had been

41 G

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

willing and able to print the first version of all
the dramas, we should probably find that it was
The reason for Shakspere's custom in working over old plays,
^rst to make a thorough revision, and then to
rewrite and improve this if its success on the
boards warranted. Under such conditions as
these, only quite new plays could be written,
as with us, in accordance with a consciously
precise structure, a settled conception of cha
racter, an idea or purpose which moulds the
events : the mass of the playwright's work
sprang, with only such coherence and form
as he might import into it, from the plot or
scenes that formed his material.

Such a method in writing would be suffi
cient in itself to show that the influence of
the lost play upon the first quarto must have
been very strong ; but there is still greater
reason why the dramatist should have followed
the earlier play, in the known prestige of the
story. The prose Hamlet had probably been
familiar to Shakspere's audience for upward
of thirty years ; and a new edition was put
out five years after Shakspere's play was
printed. The lost play likewise is known to

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

have been popular for at least thirteen years ;
to what extent is shown in the fact that its
peculiar phrases crop out in contemporary The prestige

11 • r.u .0. 1 j • ofthepre-

allusions years after they were altered in
Shakspere's first quarto. Let the reader ask
himself now how he feels when a new inter
pretation of any well known personage in
literature is presented. Does he relish the
adventurer Columbus, the moralist Macchia-
velli, or the immoral Washington ? No other
writer, moreover, is so thoroughly at the mercy
of the traditions and caprices of his contem
poraries as the dramatist. And Shakspere
was no exception. Play upon play might be
cited, showing that for reasons of haste or
policy, or both, he left whole episodes that
savor of the cruder aspects of the Elizabethan
drama unrefined.

The crudities in Hamlet are not far to
seek. It is a significant fact that more than
one of the most clear-sighted of the critics
have found the Prince anything but the
' sweet ' or ' gentle ' youth of the effusive
commentators. Dr. Johnson says : Hamlet
'plays the madman most when he treats

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems
to be useless and wanton cruelty.' And
Steevens adds, ' He defers his purpose [of
revenge] till he can find an opportunity of
taking his uncle when he is least prepared
for death, that he may insure damnation to
his soul. Though he assassinated Polonius
by accident, yet he deliberately procures the
execution of his school-fellows, Rosencrantz

and Guildenstern Their end (as

he declares in subsequent conversation with
Horatio) gives him no concern, for they ob
truded themselves into the service, and he
thought he had a right to destroy them.
From his brutal conduct toward Ophelia he
is not less accountable for her distraction and
death. He interrupts the funeral designed in
honor of this lady. . . .He insults the
brother of the dead, and boasts of an affection
for his sister, which, before, he had denied
to her face.' That either Dr. Johnson or
Steevens presents a sympathetic view of
Hamlet's character few will be hardy enough
to insist ; but any candid reader will admit
that every one of their charges, like either of

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

the opposing theories with regard to Shak-
spere's spiritual ideas, is substantiated by the
facts of the story ; and that these facts have
never been satisfactorily reconciled.

If, now, we consider the manifold con- on
sequences of the growth of the play through
the successive versions, a few, at least, of the blood*
inconsistencies will be accounted for. Take,
for instance, the Ghost episode. This, it will
be remembered, does not occur in the Hys-
torie. Its introduction into the lost play is
doubtless due to Thomas Kyd, and sprang,
in all probability, like that of Andrea's Ghost
into Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, from the desire
to make a telling scene, and incidentally to
emphasize the hero's duty of revenge. How
striking the scene proved in the lost play
is witnessed by the constant recurrence of
the Ghost's phrase, ' Hamlet, Revenge ! ' in
the books of the times. When, now, the
prince was made the instrument of a re- The develop-
vengeful spirit, it is evident that he had to "ohost episode.
be represented as a creature of far greater
dignity than the Hamblet of the Hystorie. In
an acting drama, too, the guise of clownish

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

imbecility, which was made so much of in
the prose narrative, would, in the long run,
be monotonous. His demonstrations of in
sanity had to be made chiefly mental. Thus,
for a double reason, Hamlet's character was
raised and invigorated. When, now, this dig
nified and acute Hamlet of the lost play had
received his commands from the Ghost, and
was primed with his revengeful purpose, it
was evident that he must be checked, or the
play would end with the first two acts. Two
expedients were hit upon to delay the killing
of the King. The first was the question of
the honesty of the Ghost, which involved the
play within the play. The second was the
scene where Hamlet surprises the King at
his prayers. Here it is shown that, to make
his filial revenge complete, he must, according
to the obsolete theology of the time, kill the
King

about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't,

because

He took my father grossly, full of bread,

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

The modern explanation of these truculent
lines is that, with instinctive horror of blood
shed, Hamlet was practicing self-deception ;
but not until Shakspere's final version, when
Hamlet became so highly self-conscious and
intellectual, can this explanation bear the
slightest pertinence. The cruel cunning is
precisely in character with the Hamblet of the
Hystorie, and likewise with Kyd's Hieron-
imo in The Spanish Tragedy. It was doubt
less highly characteristic also of the Hamlet
of the lost play. Yet, even in Shakspere's
first quarto, Hamlet, when he appears at
his best, is gentle enough to rise above the
cruelty of this revenge. His character thus
bears two distinctly contradictory phases — one
a remnant of the Prince of the lost play,
the other a foreshadowing of the Hamlet
that was to come. That Shakspere was
fully aware of this double nature we need
not question ; but we must also keep in mind
that if he were to remove the seat of the
trouble, the entire scene of the King's prayer,
one of the already too few explanations of
Hamlet's delay, would be sacrificed. Thus

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

the inevitable result of bringing in the Ghost
was to saddle upon the Prince — eventually
so gentle — one of the most diabolical senti
ments the mind of man can frame.

The history of Hamlet's madness pre
sents another case of the same kind. In all
the pre-Shaksperean forms of the story there
was clearly no real insanity ; and the tradition
on this point was so strong that it would have
been a dramatic impropriety to make Ham-
The history of let really mad. In the majority of the scenes
of Shakspere's first quarto, consequently,
there is not the slightest doubt that Hamlet
is pretending the madman : the entire action
of the play rests upon this fact. Under
Shakspere's remodelling, however, his mind
has become extremely acute and sensitive,
and perhaps morbid ; and the mental strain
he is under is overpowering. He has lost
the cold and cunning ' subtiltie ' of the Ham-
blet of the Hystorie, and is vested with a
passionate trenchancy of wit. As a result, it
is not always clear that he is perfectly sane.
On this point accordingly, as well as on the
point of the gentleness of his spirit, Shak-

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

spare's happiest additions to the old tragedy
of blood were precisely contradictory to its
vital structure as a drama. Wherever
Hamlet is in action his character dates back
to the lost play: the Shaksperean element
has to do almost exclusively with the reflec
tive, imaginative, humane traits of his portrai
ture. Yet even if it ever occurred to Shak-
spere that the scenes where Hamlet was
most highly wrought intellectually were not
consonant with the scenes where he was
more coldly playing the madman, it could
scarcely have troubled him ; for his audience
was nothing if not uncritical. In point of
fact, it was two hundred years before serious
doubt of Hamlet's sanity was aroused ; and
even yet comparatively few students of Shak-
spere are convinced that he is really mad.
To reconstruct the whole play so as to bring
it into harmony with the refined traits lately
developed in Hamlet's character would have
been only less out of the question than to
remove the scene where he surprised the
King at his prayers. Hamlet's pretended
madness caused too much mirth to the

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

vulgar, to be dispensable from a tragedy
without underplot.

Hamlet's cruelty to Ophelia, however, is
The great to be accounted for only by reference to that
SQfheiia. Elizabethan attitude toward suffering and
insanity which we found in the lost play. If I
can show that to Shakspere's audiences these
scenes possessed an element of now-archaic
comedy, many contradictory facts of the
Prince's portraiture may be accounted for.
In order to show this scientifically, it is ne
cessary to ascertain the precise attitude of the
Elizabethans toward those scenes in their
drama in which cruelty is most evidently
treated in the bear-whipping spirit, and mad
ness after the fashion of the gallants and
gentlewomen in Armin's anecdote.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

That no subject was too high for this GRUESOME
archaic comedy is apparent in the Chester THE^OLD*
Miracle play of NoaKs Flood, which was DRAMA
written in the latter half of the fourteenth
century. It describes the difficulty Noah and i.
his sons had in inducing his wife to embark.

'Noye . . .

Wyffe, we shall in this vessell be kepte,
My children and thou I woulde ye in lepte.

Noyes Wife

In fayth, Noye, I hade as lefTe thou slepte !
For all thy frynishe fare,
I will not doe after thy reade.

Noye
Good Wyffe, doe nowe as I thee bydde.

Noyes Wiffe

Be Christe ! not or I see more neede,
Though thou stande all daye and stare.

Noye

Lorde, that wemen be crabbed aye,
And non are meke I dare well saye ;
That is well seene by me to daye,
In witnesse of you ichone.'

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

With this astute observation to the audience
Noah contents himself until the ark is finished
and all the animals are on board.
lNoye

Wiffe, come in : why standes thou their ?

Thou arte ever frowarde, I dare well sweare ;

Come in, one Codes name ! halfe tyme yt

For feare leste that we drowne. [were,
Noyes Wiffe

Yea, sir, sette up youer saile,

And rowe fourth with evill haile,

For withouten fayle

I will not oute of this towne ;

But I have my gossippes everyechone,

One foote further I will not gone : . . .

They loven me full wel, by Christe !

But thou lett them into thy cheiste,

Elles rowe nowe wher thy leiste,

And gette thee a newe wiffe.
Noye

Seme, sonne, loe ! thy mother is wrawe ;

Be God, such another I doe not knowe.
Sem

Father, I shall fetch her in, I trowe,

Withoutten anye fayle.'

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

Here follows a sharp dispute, and probably
a scuffle, in which Noah's wife is apparently
by no means worsted. At any rate she
gathers her gossips about her and sings a
jolly drinking song. ' Jeffatte' remonstrates
with no avail, and finally ' Sem ' carries her
bodily into the ark. ' Welckome, wiffe, into
this botte,' says Noah. ' Have thou that for
thy note ! ' she replies, evidently striking him
as she is carried up the gang-plank. ' Ha,
ha ! marye, this is hotte ! ' Noah laughs
good-naturedly. Then they all join in a
genuinely pious song, the waters close in,
and God ends the play with a long speech in
praise of Noah. That our forefathers
accepted such reverend personages in so
mirthful a farce, makes it appear less im
probable that they managed to get more
or less fun out of Hamlet and Ophelia.

A somewhat more complex instance is
presented in the tragic end of Marlowe's Jew
of Malta, which was written and acted during
Shakspere's early manhood. Barabas, the Jew,
personifies the greed for gold ; and, in the
opening scene of the play at least, appears

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

splendidly opulent and powerful. Still, since
he is a Jew, he can only be an object of hatred
and abhorrence to an Elizabethan audience.
z. Marlowe's He goes through four acts doing deeds of
MaUa: cruelty and perfidy ; and in the fifth act, as
every one must expect, he is caught up with.
Relying on the aid of the Governor of Malta,
he is about to put an end to Calymath, traitor
ously, in the following manner :

'Bar. . . Now as for Calymath and his con
sorts,

Here haue I made a dainty Gallery,
The floore whereof, this Cable being cut,
Doth fall asunder ; so that it doth sinke
Into a deepe pit past recouery .
A warning-peece shall be shot off from the

Tower,
To giue thee knowledge when to cut the

cord,
And fire the house ; say, will not this be

braue ? . .

Enter Calymath and Bashawes. .
Bar. Will't please thee, mighty Selim-

Calymath,
To ascend our homely stayres ? '

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

But the Governor is not to be counted on.

' Gov. Stay, Calymath ;

For I will shew thee greater curtesie

Than Barabas would haue affoorded thee.

Kni. Sound a charge there !

\_A charge sounded within. Ferneze cuts the
cord: the floor of the gallary gives way, and
Barabas falls into a caldronj\

Bar. Hslpe, helpe me! Christians, helpe.

Fern. See, Calymath, this was deuis'd

for thee ! ' Ed. \^,fol.Ki; or Act V., Sc. VI.

This is a case of the biter bitten. The
hatred and abhorrence which Barabas has
aroused earlier in the play are allayed by this
bit of poetic justice ; and the piece ends in a
burst of savagely triumphant mirth. The Jew
of Malta is the direct prototype of Shakspere's
Merchant of Venice, which was first called
the Jew of Venice.

Instances of the comic aspect of insanity
on the Elizabethan stage are not far to seek.
In Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, Hieronimo's son Tragedy:
has been murdered by one Lorenzo, and Hier-
onimo ' runnes lunaticke ' with grief and the
desire for revenge.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

'Enter two Portingales, and Hieronimo

meets them. . . .
2. You could not tell vs if his sonne were

there ?
Hier. Who, my Lord, Lorenzo.

1. I, sir.

He goes in at one dore, and comes out at

another.
Hier. . . . There, in a brazen Caldron

fixt by love,

In his fell wrath vpon a sulpher flame :
Your selues shall finde Lorenzo bathing him,
In boyling lead and blood of innocents.
/. Ha, ha, ha.

Hier. Ha, ha, ha : why ha, ha, ha.
Forwell good ha, ha, ha. Exit.

2. Doubtlesse this man is passing luna-

ticke.'

Ed. 1602, fol. G$; Ed. Dodsley-Hazlitt,p. 106.

Kyd's Hamlet could have been no more
above such a scene than his companion figure,
Hieronimo.

A more amusing instance is in the comic
4. Middietoris underplot of Middleton's tragedy of The
<ChanSeU,,s: changeling. Alibius, 'a Doctor, who under-

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

takes the cure of fools and madmen,' is
guarding a beautiful young wife. Antonio,
' a pretended changeling,' and Franciscus,
'a counterfeit madman,' have assumed their
disguises to gain entrance to Alibius's home.
The situation is roughly the same as in the
comic underplot of Beaumont and Fletcher's
Spanish Curate, where Leandro gains access
to the Notary's wife, Amaranta, by becoming
the notary's law pupil. In Middleton's
underplot, however, the scene is in Bedlam.
Fools and madmen go through their antics
on the stage ; while among them the two
young bucks vie with each other in simulat
ing madness, and in assailing in the interims
the mad-house keeper's wife. To give an
adequate idea of the kind of comedy this
produces, it would be necessary to quote the
entire underplot. Roughly we have here, on
the one hand, a nest of genuine ninnies, like
Armin's Leonard ; and on the other, a couple
of gallants pretending madness for their per
sonal ends, like the Hamlet of the lost play.
Although the tragic scenes of The Changeling
make one of the most effective dramas out-

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

side the covers of Shakspere, this mad
underplot was so popular that it usurped the
title of the play.

The madmen in the tragic climax of
Webster's Duchess of Malfi, a play belonging
to the later school of tragedies of blood,
present a most difficult and complex problem
The Duchess' brother, Ferdinand, has sepa
rated her violently from her husband, and is
putting her to death in a darkened room,
with various ingenious tortures.

'Ferd. . . Here's a hand,
To which you haue vow'd much loue : the
Ring vpon't giues her a dead

You gaue. mans hand.'

The Duchess supposes that her husband has
returned and is standing beside her.

'Duck. I affectionately kisse it : ...

You are very cold.

I feare you are not well after your trauell :
Hah ? lights : oh horrible :
Ferd. Let her haue lights enough Exit!

Ed. 1623, Act IIIL, Scene I.
58

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

The madmen are introduced in the next
scene.

'Servant. I am come to tell you,
Your brother hath entended you some

sport :
A great Physitian, when the Pope was

sicke

Of a deepe mellancholly, presented him
With seuerall sorts of mad-men, which

wilde obiect
(Being full of change, and sport,) forc'd

him to laugh,
And so th' impost-hume broke : the selfe

same cure,

The Duke intends on you. . . .
There's a mad Lawyer, and a secular

Priest,

A Doctor that hath forfeited his wits
By iealousie : an Astrologian,
That in his workes, sayd such a day o'

th' moneth,
Should be the day of doome ; and,

fayling oft,
Ran mad : . . . '

The madmen enter. . . .

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

/. Come on Sir, I will lay the law to you.
2. Oh, rather lay a coraziue, the law will

eate to the bone,
j. He that drinkes but to. satisfie nature

is damn'd.
4. If I had my glasse here, I would shew

a sight should make

All the women here, call me mad Doctor,
/. What's he,, a rope-maker ?
2. No, no, no, a snufling knaue, that

while he shewes the
Tombes, will haue his hand in a wenches

placket,
j. Woe, to the Caroach, that brought

home my wife from
The Masque, at three a clocke in the

morning, it had a large
Feather-bed in it.' Actus nil, Scena II.

After this comes the death of the Duchess —
perhaps the most brutally tremendous scene
in English literature.

Now what was the dramatic purpose of
this episode of the madmen ? To the mo
dern mind it appears just such another savage
persecution of the Duchess as the episode

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

of the dead man's hand. To the Duchess
certainly it can be nothing else. We should
have to assume that to the audience too it
was simply that, except for one fact : When
the madmen come in they are ' full of change
and sport ' — characteristic Elizabethan sport,
which, terrible as it was supposed to be to the
Duchess, could not fail to amuse the audience.
The difference in the point of view of the
Duchess and of the audience is aptly illustrated
by a passage in the very same play. Delio
brings Julia news of her husband's approach.
' Del. I neuer knew man, and beast, of a
horse, and a knight,

So weary of each other, if he had had
a good backe,

He would haue vndertooke to haue borne
his horse,

His breech was so pittifully sore.

Julia. Your laughter,

Is my pitty! Actus //., Scena IIII.

So with the Duchess. In spite of the sight
of her suffering, the jests of the madmen are
precisely of a nature to amuse the audience.
Consider now the dramatic situation.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

The playwright is on the verge of one of the
most horribly affecting scenes in literature,
but the spectators have already been sated
with horrors. There must be a laughing
spell to rest them for what is to come, yet
the playwright must not break the continuity
of the climax by bringing in a purely comic
scene. As Webster solves this dramatic
problem, the Duchess is represented all the
time in extreme torture. Nevertheless, the
madmen, who are her 'pitty,' are the 'laughter'
of the audience ; though doubtless the au
dience never entirely forgets the horror of
her situation.

The general correspondence between
the brutally serious side of the plays review
ed, and the brutal comedy of the scenes that
were evidently intended to relieve the strain
of continued tragedy, can scarcely have
escaped attention ; and the reason for this
correspondence is not far to seek. The
tragedy of blood had an atmosphere of its
own, where not only was the brutally comic
in place, but where refined comedy would
have been a positive fault in chiaroscuro.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

The scenes I have instanced cannot be
fully understood without a careful reading of
the plays in which they occur. Indeed, a
thorough study of this subject would carry
one much farther. I have selected these
few passages because they occur in the
most celebrated of the old dramas. Similar
ones may be found in almost any old writer.
For the comic aspect of physical torture,
consult the fight between Gammer Chat and
Gammer Gurton in Gammer Gurtoris Nee
dle. The incident of Bajazeth and his cage
in Marlowe's Tamburlaine is also suggestive.
For the comic treatment of madness, consult
the fifth act of Dekker's Honest Whore.

It is yet to be made evident that Shak-
spere would be guilty of the grossness of his
contemporaries. The first part of Henry IV. 6- Fahtaffin
will give a good instance. Prince Hal has done enry '
the last rites of chivalry over the body of his
vanquished rival, Hotspur, and has left him
with a speech, the pathos and ideal manhood
of which are beyond praise. Yet no sooner
is he off the stage than Falstaff rises from
the ground where he has been shamming dead,

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

speaks twenty lines of buffoonery, stabs Hot
spur's body, and finally 'takes up Hotspur on
his back' and lugs him off the stage. On the
next page he claims the honor of killing
Hotspur. 'There is Percy,' he says to Hal,
' (throwing the body down) : if your father will
do me any honor, so ; if not, let him kill the
next Percy himself.' The Hamlet of the first
quarto could scarcely have been more sacred
from this sort of fun than Hotspur.

The same sacrilege may be found in
King Lear and in the Merchant of Venice.
An admirable exposition of this is in Pro
fessor Barrett Wendell's lectures on Shak-
spere, first delivered at Harvard University
in 1892-3, and since published, the brief
manuscript notes of which he has kindly
permitted me to quote. They give chiefly
the results. The sum total of the evidence
of these statements would involve an essay
within the essay.

7. 'King Lear.' ' Lear seems originally to have been popu
lar. This I conceive can hardly have been for
the reasons that make it perennially great. As
a mere guess, I venture to suggest two grounds

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

for its popularity which would have appealed
to an Elizabethan audience, and would quite
fail to appeal to an audience of to-day. The
first is an almost ultimate chance for sonorous
rant, offered by the part of Lear ; the second
is the conventionally comic element which the
Elizabethan audience recognized in insanity.
These guesses I purposely mention and em
phasize. True or false, they certainly serve to
recall a true fact that we constantly lose sight
of, the essential difference of Shakspere's world
from ours.

1 Lear is after all originally contemporary
with the old tragedies of blood, and not twenty
years removed from Tamburlaine himself.

' The title of the quarto of Lear empha
sizes "the unfortunate life of Edgar" and "the
sudden and assumed humours of Tom of Bed
lam" (that is of Edgar) just as the title of the
quarto of Henry IV. emphasizes Falstaff ; and
of Henry K, Falstaff and Pistol. Edgar, I
imagine, was really conceived by the author to
be comic, to lighten the situation throughout,
and as the play was popular I think the audience
must have taken this view.'

65 K.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

An actor, now living, who took the part
of Edgar in Booth's company, once assured
me that in Texas, and other places remote
from the centres of culture, his part was often
laughed at, though he spared no effort to bring
out its tragedy.

Of Shylock, Professor Wendell says :
8. lTke Mer- ' His . . . treatment by the very

chant of ^ Christians he has obliged, naturally arouses
all the evil in him. His revenge is wholly
comprehensible — not so to me, is the con
temptuous brutality with which he finally
meets.

' To understand this we must deliberately
revive some dead sentiments of the world, —
its ecclesiastically fostered abhorrence of usury
and of Jews. Vastly foreign these data of
Elizabethan England to a commercial and a
sentimentally philanthropic age and people
like our own. But even when we have . . .
tried to put ourselves in the place of Shak-
spere's audiences, we have not done enough.
To me, at all events, the treatment of Shylock
as we conceive him now-a-days, remains, in
spite of my imaginative efforts, sympathetically

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

repellant. And so, the whole effect of the play
remains artistically unsatisfying. I am asked
to give full sympathy to people whose conduct
is ultimately outrageous. Where is the trouble?
As a dramatic artist Shakspere can hardly be
believed to have intended such an effect as
this. Is the Hebraic Shylock of our stage
really " the Jew that Shakspere drew ? "

' This Hebraic Shylock is reputed to
date from Macklin's performance in 1741,
which Pope described in that doggerel couplet.
And even Macklin dared not discard the tra
ditional blood-red wig of the traditional Judas
of the miracle plays. Before his time, so far
as we can learn, the character was tradi
tionally treated as low comedy. Clearly this
old conception does not fit the lines. The
character as a character is a great, serious
Shaksperean creation, which may be studied
and reasoned about psychologically almost like
a human being. In literature, at all events,
we consider rather what people are than what
they seem like. In studying character we
are instinctively inclined to neglect the various
bodily forms in which character may mani'

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

fest itself. Is not this perhaps the trouble
here ?

' Elizabethan England was childishly
brutal. . . . Elizabethan England held
lunacy highly comic. It saw rather the
grotesqueness than the horror of physical
torture. Is not what so repels our sympathy,
after all, not so much the inherent brutality
of the treatment Shylock receives, as the
application of such treatment to the kind of
Shylock whom we see receive it ? This is
a grand Hebraic figure, smacking of the
prophets. Would not a mean, cringing,
" jewy" Shylock — reminding one of the pimps
and pawnbrokers who to-day make up the
Jewish rabble, — repel sympathy still — for all
Shakspere's sympathetic psychology ? Surely
it would have done so in that age so foreign
to our fine philanthropy — the brutally childish
England of Elizabeth. And some such child
ish, unfeeling conception must in my opinion
have been the real conception of Shakspere.
As an artistic playwright, he could not have
meant our sympathy to go with Shylock.
No rendering of Shylock, then, that renders

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

the part essentially so noble as to be seriously
sympathetic, can, in my opinion, make his
fate artistically tolerable. I know of few
facts that emphasize more forcibly than this
the ultimate remoteness from our own world
not only of Elizabethan England, but also of
Shakspere, the Elizabethan playwright.'

The actual growth in Hamlet's charac
ter from Kyd's lost play to Shakspere's final
version was precisely similar to the growth
in the interpretation of Shylock. Even in
Shakspere's time, as has been pointed out,
it so far upset the balance between comedy
and tragedy as to necessitate the introduction
of new comic scenes in the first quarto.

Thus far I have tacitly assumed that
the comic delight in physical suffering and Gruesome.

. —,. &, . r ' . . . f> comedy since

insanity is Elizabethan, and archaic, it was
distinctly characteristic of Elizabeth's Eng
land, but not exclusively so. There is
abundant evidence that it existed in post-
Shaksperean literature. A notable instance is
Milton's description of the fate of popish
sinners — ' eremites and friars ' in the third
book of Paradise Lost. And in at least two

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

modern plays extreme physical suffering —
a villain crushed under an elevator, and the
accidental application of a mustard plaster to
a bald head — has been introduced as comedy.

Modern plays, An excellent modern instance of the delight
in madmen is to be found in Scott's Anti
quary ; and, though extinct on the stage, it
exists to-day among uneducated men and in
almost every robust boy. In rural districts
when idiots are at large it is by no means
uncommon to see them the friend and laugh
ing stock of the neighbourhood, precisely as
were Armin's ninnies.

This treatment of insanity finds a very
suggestive parallel in our conventional atti
tude toward that temporary insanity, drun
kenness. This, though we usually treat it
essentially as tragedy, we often present at

The modem first in a largely comic aspect. Examples
mav be found in the novels of so late a writer
as Mr. Howells. For instance, the man who
is drunk on board the Aroostook ; Hartley
Hubbard, in the Modern Instance ; and the
scene in Annie Kilburn where the lawyer
Putney gets drunk. Three centuries from

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

now, perhaps, it will take as strong an effort
of historical imagination to appreciate the
fun of Putney's drunken gibes as it takes
to-day to appreciate the humour of Hamlet's
hoax upon Ophelia.

To recapitulate, I have shown that the A summary.
plot of Shakspere's Hamlet is that of a crude
tragedy of blood ; and that in the lost play
upon which Shakspere worked Hamlet's
madness was made comic even in the most
serious scenes. I have shown, too, that such
a state of affairs was quite in character with
known traits of Shakspere's audience. I
then showed that, owing to Shakspere's
methods in writing plays, the necessities of
the plot upon which he worked, and the
prestige of the story, he would not, in
refining Hamlet, be likely to make it a
consistent whole ; and moreover that he
would not be apt wholly to eradicate the
now archaic comic treatment of Hamlet's
madness. The probability of this last was
strengthened by an exposition of certain
scenes in the plays of Shakspere's contem
poraries, and in Shakspere's own plays, where

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

a comic treatment of suffering and madness
is evident. Incidentally I have noticed that
the Elizabethan attitude toward insanity is
not yet extinct. It now remains to show
that in Shakspere's first quarto of Hamlet
distinct traces remain of the comic treatment
of suffering and insanity.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

Several scenes might be cited, for THAT
instance the 'Punch and Judy show atSHAKSPERE

~ , ,. , J . .J , RETAINED

Ophelia s grave, as one critic calls the THE MAD
struggle between Hamlet and Laertes ; or COMEDY
the pathetic scene where Ophelia, in her
madness, sings amusingly coarse songs.
But space restricts me to the scene upon
which there is most evidence — -that where
Hamlet appears to treat Ophelia with such
contempt and cruelty. The emotions here,
however we may choose to conceive them,
are more complex than in any Shaksperean
scene yet discussed, and, as will appear later,
the archaism of this scene in the lost play
is more complete ; yet here, if anywhere, it
will be possible to clinch my hypotheses and
analogies with purely scientific evidence.
Not only will the scene in itself be highly
significant, but it will, I think, afford the
strongest possible evidence in support of
the suppositions hitherto advanced.

73 L

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

I have tried to prove that in the lost
play the Hamlet-Ophelia scene had a comic
aspect ; and in the character of the many
The Hamlet- scenes since quoted from the Elizabethan
Ophelia scene.^ drama, mv Opmion has received strong
though indirect confirmation. When now
one tries to fix upon the exact spirit of the
Shaksperian version of this scene according
to modern conceptions, one finds that it
has baffled critics and actors. Johnson and
Steevens, who were nearer to Shakspere
in point of time, find, as we have seen, that
Hamlet is actuated by sheer cruelty ; and
many commentators have reiterated the
charge, insisting that no skill in acting is
able to remove an impression approaching
to actual pain, unless by a gross violation
of the text and the meaning of the author.
The violation referred to consists in making
Hamlet see the 'lawful espials,' and in making
him wholly insane. His cruelty to Ophelia
is then pardonable, one may believe, on the
score of self-defense. Certain of the actors
however, and notably Booth, have evidently
been ill-satisfied with this feeble casuistry, for

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

they have represented Hamlet actually mad.
Thus both the text and early traditions of the
play go by the board. Yet this rendering
makes the scene, according to an eminent
writer, 'the most terrifically affecting in Shake
speare. ' Now any one of these interpretations,
from Dr. Johnson down, would satisfy the
most exacting. But the fact that almost every
commentator and actor has a view radically
different from the views of all others, is far
from satisfying. For myself, my sole excuse
for speaking is that I do not attempt an
explanation, but rather try to show that, owing
to an inheritance of archaic comedy from the
lost play, the facts of the scene, according to
modern standards, admit of no reconcile
ment.

That a trace of comedy persists in the
demand that Polonius 'play the foole no where
but in his owne house' I have already indicated ;
but I have omitted to point out how capital
a laugh can be made of this if we once quit Traces of
our conventional reverence for the scene. As comedy-
Hamlet is speaking, Polonius is peeping out
from behind the arras that hangs before the

' study,' where he has been ' close,' and is quite
sure that he is about to gain evidence for the
King that Hamlet's madness springs from love.
He is visible to the audience, whether or not
he has been discovered by Hamlet. But in
stead of the love-scene, Polonius sees a most
astonishing bit of satire on love, and in the
end receives a slap in the face himself. A
single telling grimace here from the venerable
fool would be enough to set the pit howling.
The comedy of this situation is distinctly
stronger than that in the scene where Hamlet
pretends to take Polonius for a fishmonger,
because the old courtier is as a woodcock to
his own springe, neatly trapped in accordance
with the laws both of poetic justice and of the
comedy of situation. The scene is, I take it,
sufficient to prove a cousinship> however re
mote, between the German play and the first
quarto.

The degree of such relationship cannot be
A guess as to calculated until we settle definitely the cha-
tkis scene in racter of the corresponding scene in the lost

the lost play. . . , . P . .

play. A natural supposition is that it stood
midway between the Shaksperean and the

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

German scenes. Still it is not easy to figure
what it would be in this case, any more than
to imagine what sort of beast would be cousin
to the tiger and the ape. Fortunately in
Webster's Duchess of Malft, we have a scene
that is similar enough to be significant on this
point. Indeed, as Webster was in the habit
of imitating Shakspere's scenes, this might be
regarded as an echo of the earlier version of
Hamlet's satire on women.
'Bos^ . . You come from painting now ?
Old Lady. From what?
Bos. Why, from your scuruy face-phy

sicke,
To behold thee not painted enclines some

what neere
A miracle : These in thy face here, were

deepe rutts,

And foule sloughes the last progresse :
There was a Lady in France, that hauing

had the small pockes,
Flead the skinne off her face, to make it

more leuell ;

And whereas before she look'd like a Nut
meg-grater,

After she resembled an abortiue hedge
hog.

Old Lady. Doe you call this paint
ing?
Bos. No, no, but you call carreening

of an old

Morphew'd Lady, to make her disem
bogue againe,
There's rough-cast phrase to your plas-

tique. ' Actus II., Scena I.

The rest of the scene is similarly satirical,
but too coarse to quote.

This play, as we have already seen, is a
tragedy of blood, bristling with horrors, and
without comic underplot. The Old Lady ap
pears only in this scene and one other, and
speaks in each about a score of feeble words.
Her appearance is obviously a 'fetch'; and,
considering the nature of the tragedy, not. a
' fetch ' to increase the horror. She typifies
the vices of women, which, even to-day, we
oftenest treat in their merely amusing aspect,
and is thus made the object of brutal satire.
When she goes out, the tragic incidents, of
the play are resumed with renewed spirit. If,

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

now, Bosola, the villain, were saving himself
from tyranny by feigned madness, and the
Old Lady were a woman sent — innocently
or not — to elicit his secret, a scene precisely
similar to the Hamlet-Ophelia scene would
result, and would afford even more legitimate
sport than the scene in the Duchess, because
the pretence of madness and the presence of
the King and his Councillor in concealment
would make a comic 'situation.'

Let us suppose then, for the nonce, that
even in the first quarto the Hamlet-Ophelia
scene had a distinctly comic aspect, in spite of Ophelia scene.
its seriousness. To realize its precise charac
ter in this case we must put aside, first of all,
the memory of the Hamlet of the familiar
version, and think of the cruder Hamlet
of the first quarto. Ophelia, likewise, we
must conceive as a very near relative of the
' beawtifull lady ' of the Hystorie, not as the
highly discreet woman of the modern stage,
We must bear in mind, too, that many
features of the scene had long been familiar
to Shakspere's audience, through the Hystorie
and the lost play, in a comic form.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

Let us look at two or three individual
speeches. The situation of a man sailing
under false colours is very common in co
medy, and the blunders it occasions seldom
fail to divert an audience. If, when Polo-
nius was so thoroughly outwitted — ' Let the
doores be shut/ etc. — or while Ophelia was
being rated for the vices of women — ' Your
wantonnesse . . . hath made me madde' —
the audience listened with childish delight,
then Ophelia's speeches ' Oh heauens secure
him ! ' and ' Pray God restore him/ added
hugely to the comedy. If, on the contrary,
the Hamlet of the first quarto was so highly
endowed with unbalanced intellect that he
appeared to the Elizabethan audience quite
unhinged, the scene might possibly have
appeared, as it is with us, in the words of the
prominent critic, ' the most terrifically affect
ing scene in Shakespeare.' The degree of
comedy would probably vary according to
the temperament of the spectator. Indeed,
my personal opinion is, that Shakspere's
audiences were quite capable of feeling
strongly and simultaneously both the archaic

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

comedy and the enduring tragedy of the
scene. It has too often been necessary
in the course of this essay to point out the
brutality of some of their mental attitudes,
and their lack of modern conventional stan
dards in taste and feeling. How strong
their natural instincts were in mirth, pathos,
and terror, is evident in the fact that they
made possible the marvellously varied and
luxuriant Shaksperean drama. It was not
without reason that Robert Armin com
plained of those that 'would not seeme
too immodest' in expressing natural feel
ing ; and ' thinke to make all, when God
knowes they marre all.' It would perhaps
be as well for the modern novel and stage
if taste and emotion were more spontaneous
and less a matter of critical convention.

Thus far the evidence has been, as
hitherto, only partially scientific ; but this
is not the case with that brought to light
by a comparison of the text of the German
version already quoted in full (pp. 23, 24)
with the text of the first quarto. The fact
that there is here the closest verbal parallel

81 M

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

places the kinship in spirit beyond reason -
7*ke identity of ab\o, doubt. The only passages in the
*%an witTike whole German scene that are unrepresented
German m Shakspere are the unimportant sentence
' get thee away . . .' and the anecdote,
which there is reason to hope saw light on
German soil. When Ophelia enters in the
German play, she says ' I pray your high
ness to take back the jewel which you
presented to me ;' which is the counterpart
of her first speech in the first quarto, ' My
Lord, I haue sought opportunitie, which
now I haue, to redeliuer to your worthy
handes, a small remembrance, such tokens
which I haue receiued of you.' The Ger
man Hamlet says, 'What, girl ! wouldst thou
have a husband ? . Hearken, girl,

you young women do nothing but lead
young fellows astray.' Shakspere's Hamlet
says, ' But if thou wilt needes marry, marry
a foole, For wisemen know well enough,
What monsters ye make of them.' After
this the German Hamlet says, ' Your beauty
you buy of the apothecaries and peddlers,'
which in Shakspere is, ' Nay, I haue heard

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

of your paintings too, God hath giuen you
one face, And you make your selues another.'
Both scenes end with the familiar 'To a
Nunnery goe.' Thus the first and last features
of the scene are identical, and every interme
diate speech in the German version, with the
trifling exception noted, is represented in
Shakspere. We have here positive proof
that the two scenes — one abject buffoonery,
and the other capable of appealing to the
modern mind as ' the most terrifically affect
ing scene in Shakespeare' — were constructed
on precisely the same lines. If these instances
are insufficient, the reader may consult at
his leisure the coarse comic treatment of
Ophelia's madness in the German play, and
compare it word for word with the text of
this most tragic scene in Shakspere. The
same verbal parallel is evident, though in a
less marked degree. We must conclude that the final proof
even in Shakspere's first version the comic tkatHamUfs

- ... 11 madness had a

element, now quite archaic, must nave been comic aspect.
distinctly evident to the Elizabethans.

But what of the ultimate Hamlet of the
Shaksperian stage? We know that in the

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

second quarto the distinctively Shaksperian
elements of the Prince's character were
added, — the philosophic and the poetic,
those flashes of imagination, those deep and
fine touches of a moody and cheerless yet
noble philosophy. For a treatment of this
I refer to the modern critics, who have rightly
taken it as the characteristic and significant
aspect. The speeches that we know to have
come from the old play, however, were
left in their places almost intact — in the
Hamlet- Ophelia scene quite intact; and
though we may assume that the traits last
evolved in the Prince's character tended to
distract attention from them, to gloss them
over, they nevertheless remain to this day
stubbornly inconsistent with the gentler traits
of the Prince we know and love. When
Hamlet is in action he is to be judged by
the standards of the tragedy of blood and
revenge. It is only in his speech and man
ner that the Shaksperian conception shines
forth. In this fact lies the root of most of
the disagreements among the modern critics
and actors.

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

Yet for the modern stage all this has little The Hamlet of

themt '
stage.

significance. Full as our Hamlet is of viola- the ™dern

tions of the text, it is for us the only Hamlet.
' In a deep embayed window Ophelia kneels.'
Hamlet 'steadies himself by the balustrade,
moves on again mechanically, is stopped by
a chair, sinks into it, — still silent, utterly ab
sorbed. In another moment the " To be, or
not to be " is uttered in a voice at first almost
inaudible. . . Rising suddenly and crossing
toward the window, he sees Ophelia. His
whole face changes. A lovely tenderness
suffuses it. Sweetness fills his tones as he
addresses her. When, with exquisite soft
ness of manner, he draws nearer to her, he
catches a glimpse of the "lawful espials" in
the gallery above . . . When he says
suddenly, " Where's your father ? " he lays his
hand upon Ophelia's head, and turns her
face up to his as he stands above her. She
answers, looking straight into the eyes that
love her, " At home, my lord." No accusation,
no reproach, could be so terrible as the sudden
plucking away of his hand, and the pain of
his face as he turns from her. The whole

Booth's

rendering

described.

scene he plays like one distract. He is never
still. He strides up and down the stage, in
and out at the door, speaking outside with the
same rapidity and vehemence. The speech,
" I have heard of your paintings, too, well
enough," he begins in the outer room, and the
contemptuous words hiss as they fall. "It
hath made me mad " was uttered with a flutter
of the hand about the head more expressive
than words. As he turned toward Ophelia
for the last time, all the bitterness, all the
reckless violence seemed to die out of him ;
his voice was full of unutterable love, of ap
pealing tenderness, of irrevocable doom, as
he uttered the last " To a nunnery go ! " and
tottered from the room as one who could not
see for tears.'

The day for horseplay in Hamlet is mani
festly past. Even to point out the birth-marks
on the play would be a painful task, were not
every trait of brutality so obviously outgrown.
In a vastly more subtle and significant sense
than that of the effusive commentators, Hamlet
is ' very nature ' ; for though we can by no
means talk of his acts as of those of ' a re-

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET

cently deceased acquaintance/ he still lives, The modem
breathes, and grows in beauty. The final f
significance of the Elizabethan Hamlet is, Hamlet.
that nature cherishes with endless loving kind
ness the work of those who create according to
her laws, and betters them with each passing
century. Every master hand that plays on a
Cremona imparts a new harmony to the per
fect instrument. The Cathedral softens its
sharp outlines with each century that steals
over it ; while every generation that treads
the aisles within enriches its human associa
tions. So with Hamlet. Each actor and critic
has divined new traits of beauty, and the
generations have so loved the gentleness of
the Prince, that in the light of their love the
brutal facts of many of the scenes in which
he moves are glorified. The modern Ham
let is the real Hamlet. In the truest sense
of the word he is the Shaksperean Hamlet ;
and will continue so, until new ages shall add
new beauties to our interpretation.

»7

Author's Note

THE first conception of the present essay was
that it should be a general study of the sources of
Hamlet, with a view to clearing up, if possible, some
of the literary problems of Shakspere's play. I under
took the work in the winter of 1892 — 3, at Harvard
University, as a matter of form in taking the degree
of Master of Arts with Honours in English Litera
ture. While writing the essay I was attending
Aeknowledg- Professor Barrett Wendell's lectures on Shakspere,
ments. published in 1894 by Charles Scribner's Sons, New

York, under the title of ' William Shakspere, a
Study in Elizabethan Literature/ The idea that
the tragic Edgar in Lear is none other than the
old comic Tom of Bedlam suggested that Hamlet's
assumed insanity might also have had a comic aspect,
at least in the pre-Shaksperean versions of the story.
This idea came to me so late that the new essay it
necessitated was hurried and undigested: yet it was
one of the two successful theses that year in the
competition for the Sohier Modern-Literature prize.
During the year following it was impossible to com
plete my researches ; but I have lately been able to

AUTHOR'S NOTE

do so with the aid of Malone's invaluable library, now
in the Bodleian. Here, at the last moment, I came
across Sarrazin's little book c Thomas Kyd und sein
Kreis,' the thoroughness and brilliancy of which need
no praise of mine. The last chapter of the book
gives a clear and admirable exposition of the relation
ship between the first quarto Hamlet and Kyd's old
tragedy of blood, ' Der ur-Hamlet ; ' and, by showing
that all which is least according to Shakspere's taste
proceeded from Kyd, for the first time exonerates Shak-
spere from the bizarre cruelty of many of Hamlet's
deeds. My own statement of this point, however,
I have decided to let stand, much though it suffers
by comparison, if only to show that two students,
working independently and from quite different points
of view, have agreed in these important conclusions.
The main point of my essay, the comic aspect of
Hamlet's madness, Sarrazin has apparently not sus
pected. How much of this idea I owe to Professor
Barrett Wendell must already be evident. And I
am no less obliged to Professor G. L. Kittredge,
of Harvard, without whose aid and encouragement
I should scarcely have dared to work seriously at so
extraordinary a thesis. A course of lectures on the
Elizabethan Dramatists by Mr. Geo. P. Baker, also
of Harvard, was of vital service. For aid in arranging
and proportioning the essay I am obliged to Mr. W.
D. Howells, as well as to Professors Wendell and
Kittredge ; and, for a final criticism of the book as

89 N

AUTHOR'S NOTE

it was going through the press, to Professor F. York
Powell, of Oriel College, Oxford.

The books used were chiefly the two volumes
of Furness's admirable Variorum Hamlet, which con
tains the essential information as to all sources, texts,
dates, as well as all critical and dramatic interpreta
tions, up to the year of its publication. (J. B. Lippin-
cott & Co., Philadelphia ; and 10, Henrietta Street,
Covent Garden, London. 1877). For the old plays
cited, the c Mermaid Series of the Best Plays of the
Old Dramatists ' (T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster
Row, London) is perhaps most convenient, though
the plays of Kyd are to be found in Dodsley's
4 Old English Plays,' edited by W. C. Hazl'itt
(London, Reeves & Turner, 196 Strand, 1874). In
my present citations I have preferred the earliest
accessible quartos, and have copied accurately all
imperfections of text to emphasise the remoteness of
Elizabethan literature from our modern conventions
of uniformity and consistency. Gregor Sarrazin's
'Thomas Kyd und sein Kreis, eine Litterarhistor-
ische Untersuchung,' was published in Berlin by
Emil Felber, in 1892. ' A Journey into England
by Paul Hentzner, in the year M.D.XC.VIII.'
was < printed at Strawberry-Hill. M D CC LVII.'
In modern form, it is most conveniently accessible
in Cassell's National Library, London, 1889, 16°.
CA Nest of Ninnies. Simply of themselves without
Compound, by Robert Armin.' was c printed ' in

AUTHOR'S NOTE

4 London by T. E. for John Deane, 1608,' and in
modern form is to be found in the publications of
the old Shakespeare Society, London. The Chester
Miracle Plays were printed by the old Shakespeare
Society, London, in 1843.

I-c.

"Balliol College, Oxford
Jan., 1895

Printed by R. Folkard and Son

at 22 Devonshire Street

near Queen Square

London, W.C.

List of Books

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List of Books

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ERNEST DOWSON. MAY PROBYN.

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A LOST GOD : a Poem in Three Books. With illustrations

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A LITTLE CHILD'S WREATH : A Sonnet Sequence. With
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Vigo Street, London, W.

CHAPMAN (ELIZABETH RACHEL)— continued.

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CORBIN (JOHN).

THE ELIZABETHAN HAMLET : A Study of the Sources,
and of Shakspere's Environment, to show that the Mad
Scenes had a Comic Aspect now Ignored. With a
Prefatory Note by F. YORK POWELL, Professor of
Modern History at the University of Oxford. Small
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SOME ACCOUNT OF THE OLD CHURCH AT CHELSEA AND
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DILEMMAS: Stories and Studies in Sentiment. (A Case of
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SIGHT AND SONG (Poems on Pictures). Printed by
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Printed at the CHISWICK PRESS on hand-made paper.
Cr. 8vo. 55. net. [Shortly.

HAKE (DR. T. GORDON, " The Parable Poet.")

MADELINE, AND OTHER POEMS. Crown 8vo. 55. net..

Transferred to the present Publisher.

"The ministry of the angel Daphne to her erring human sister is frequently
related in strains of pure and elevated tenderness. Nor does the poet who can show-
so much delicacy fail in strength. The description of Madeline as she pas«ea in
trance to her vengeance is full of virid pictures and charged with tragic feeling,

8 The Publications of Ellcin Mathews

HAKE (DR. T. GORDON)— continued.

The individuality of the writer lies in his deep sympathy with whatever affects the
being and condition of man. . . . Taken as a whole, the book has high and
unusual claims." — Athmnum.

"I have been reading 'Madeline' again. For sheer originality, both of conception
and of treatment, I consider that it stands alone."— MR. THEODORE WATTS.

PARABLES AND TALES. (Mother and Child. — The Crip
ple.— The Blind Boy.— Old Morality. —Old Souls.—
The Lily of the Valley.— The Deadly Nightshade.—
The Poet). With 9 illustrations by ARTHUR HUGHES.
Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. net.

Transferred to the present Publisher.

"The qualities of Dr. Gordon Hake's work were from the first fully admitted
and warmly praised by one of the greatest of contemporary poets, who was also a
critic of exceptional acuteness — Rossetti. Indeed, the only two review articles which
Rossetti ever wrote were written on two of Dr. Hake's books : * Madeline,' which he
reviewed in the Academy in 1871, and ' Parables and Tales,' which he reviewed in
the Fortnightly in 1873. Many eminent critics have expressed a decided preference
for ' Parables and Tales ' to Dr. Hake's other works, and it had the advantage of being
enriched with the admirable illustrations of Arthur Hughes." - Saturday Review,
January, 1895.

" The piece called ' Old Souls ' is probably secure of a distinct place in the liter
ature of our day, and we believe the same may b^ predicted of other poems in the
little collection just issued. . . . Should Dr. Hake's more restricted, but lovely
and sincere contributions to the poetry of real life not find the immediate response
they deserve, he may at least remember that oihers also have failed 10 meet at once
with full justice and recognition But we will hope for good encouragement to his
present and future work ; and can at least ensure the lover of poetry that in these
simple pages he shall find not seldom a humanity limpid and pellucid — the well-spring
of a true heart, with which his tears must mingle as with their own element.

"Dr. Hake has been fortunate in the beautiful drawings which Mr. Arthur^
Hughes has contributed to his little volume. No poet could have a more congenial
yqke-fellow than this gifted and imaginative artist."— D. G. ROSSETTI, in the
Fortnightly. 1875.

HALL AM (ARTHUR).

THE POEMS OF ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM, together with
his Essay "ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF
MODERN POETRY, AND ON THE LYRICAL POEMS OF
ALFRED TENNYSON," reprinted from the Englishman's
Magazine, 1831, edited, with an introduction, by
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. 550 copies (500 for sale).
Small 8vo. $s. net.
Also 50 copies L.P., 12s. 6d. net.

New York : Macmillan &* Co.
Many of these Poems are of great Tennysonian interest, having

been addressed to Alfred, Charles, and Emily Tennyson,

Vigo Street, London, W.

HAMILTON (COL. IAN}.

THE BALLAD OF HADJI, AND OTHER POEMS. With
etched frontispiece by WILLIAM STRANG. Printed
at the CHISWICK PRESS. 550 copies. I2mo. 3^. net.
Transferred by the Author to the present Publisher.
" Here is a dainty volume of clear, sparkling verse. The thought is sparkling,
and the lines limpid and lightly flowing." — Scotsman.

" There are some pretty things in this little book." — Spectator.
" An unusual amount of genuine poetry is to be found in the Ballad of Hadji.
The opening piece is a really fine ballad with great power, and pathos so intense as
to be almost painful." — Graphic.

" Mr. Ian Hamilton's Ballad of Hadji is undeniably clever." — Pall Mall Gaxette.
" The ' Ballad of Hadji' is very good, and, were it only for that, the book is
well worth buying. It possesses, however, yet another strong attraction in the shape
of many fantastically beautiful head and tail pieces from the pen of Mr. J. B. Clark,
which are scattered throughout the volume with excellent decorative effect. ' —
Chronicle.

HARPER (CHARLES G.)

REVOLTED WOMAN : PAST, PRESENT, AND TO COME.
Printed by STRANGEWAYS. Illustrated with numerous
original drawings and facsimiles by the Author.
Crown 8vo. 5^. net.

"Mr. Harper, like a modern John Knox, denounces the monstrous regiment of
women, making the ' New Woman ' the text of a discourse that bristles with historical
instances and present day portraits." — Saturday Review.

" The illustrations are distinctly clever." — Publishers' Circular.

HEMINGWAY (PERCY).

OUT OF EGYPT : Stories from the Threshold of the East.
Cover design by GLEESON WHITE. Crown 8vo.
35. 6d. net.

" This is a strong book." — Academy,

" This is a remarkable book. Egyptian life has seldom been portrayed from the
inside. . . . The author's knowledge of Arabic, his sympathy with the religion
of Islam, above all his entire freedom from Western prejudice, have enabled him to
learn more of what modern Egypt really is than the average Englishman could
possibly acquire in a lifetime at Cairo or Port Said." — African Review.

" A lively and picturesque style. . . . undoubted talent." — Manchester
Guardian.

" But seldom that the first production of an author is so mature and so finished in
style as this. . . . The sketches are veritable spoils of the Egyptians— gems of
prose in a setting of clear air, sharp outlines, and wondrous skies.— Morning Leader.

" This book places its author amongst those writers from whom lasting work of
high aim is to be expected.' — Tht Star.

"The tale ... is treated with daring directness. . . An impressive and
pathetic close to a story told throughout with arresting strength and simplicity " —
Daily Newt.

io The Publications of Elkin Mathews

HEMINGWAY (PERCY)— continued.

THE HAPPY WANDERER (Poems). With title design by
Charles I. ffoulkes. Printed at the CHISWICK PRESS,
on hand-made paper. Sq. l6mo. $s.net. [Immediately.

HICKEY (EMILY H.).

VERSE TALES, LYRICS AND TRANSLATIONS. Printed at
the ARNOLD PRESS. 30x5 copies. Imp. i6mo. $s. net.

[ Very few remain.

'Miss Mickey's 'Verse Tales, Lyrics, and Translations* almost invariably
reach a high level of finish and completeness. The book is a string of little rounded
pearls. — Atktnctum .

HINKSON (HENRY A.\

DUBLIN VERSES. By MEMBERS OF TRINITY COLLEGE.
Selected and Edited by H. A. HINKSON, late Scholar
of Trinity College, Dublin. Pott 410. 55. net.

Dublin: Hodges, Figgis <5r> Co., Limited.

Includes contributions by the following : — Aubrey de Vere,
Sir Stephen de Vere, Oscar Wilde, J. K. Ingram, A. P. Graves,
J. Todhunter, W. E. H. Lecky, T. W. Rolleston, Edward
Dowden, G. A. Greene. Savage-Armstrong, Douglas Hyde,
R. Y. Tyrrell, G. N. Plunkett, W. Macknish Dixon, William
Wilkins, George Wilkins, and Edwin Hamilton.

HINKSON (KATHARINE).

SLOES ON THE BLACKTHORN : A VOLUME OF IRISH
STORIES. Crown 8vo., 35. 6d. net. [In preparation.
LOUISE DE LA VALLIERE, AND OTHER POEMS. Small
cr. 8vo. 35. f>J. net. [ Very few remain.

Transferred by the Author to the present Publisher.
" Sweet, pure, and high poetry." — Truth.

" Very seldom is it our good fortune to close a volume of poems with such an
almost unalloyed sense of pleasure and gratitude to the author." — Graf hie.

« HOBBY HORSE (THE)."

AN ILLUSTRATED ART MISCELLANY. Edited by HERBERT
P. HORNE. The Fourth Number of the New Series
will shortly appear, after which MR. MATHEWS will
publish all the numbers in a volume, price £i. is. net.

Boston : Copeland & Day.

Vigo Street, London, W. n

HORNE (HERBERT P.)

DlVERSI COLORES: Poems. Vignette, &c , designed by
the Author. Printed at the CHISWICK PRESS. 250
copies. l6mo. $s. net.

Transferred by the Author to the present Publisher.

" In these few poems Mr. Home has set before a tasteless age, and an extravagant
age, examples of poetry which, without fear or hesitation, we consider to be of true
and pure beauty."— Anti- Jacobin.

" With all his fondness for sixteenth century styles and themes, Mr. Home is yet
sufficiently individual in his thought and manner. Much of his sentiment is quite
latter-day in tone and rendering ; he is a child of his time." — Globe.

" Mr. Home's work is almost always carefully felicitous and may be compared
with beautiful filagree work in verse. He is fully, perhaps too fully, conscious of the
value of restraint, and is certainly in need of no more culture in the handling of verse
— of such verse as alone he cares to work in. He has already the merits of a finished
artist— or, at all events, of an artist who is capable of the utmost finish.'' — Pall
Mall Cassette.

The SERIES OF BOOKS begun in "DiVERSi COLORES" by
Mr. HERBERT P. HORNE, will continue to be pub
lished by Mr. Elkin Mathews.

The intention of the series is to give, in a collected and
sometimes revised form, Poems and Essays by various
writers, whose names have hitherto been chiefly asso
ciated with the Hobby Horse. The series will be edited
by Mr. HERBERT P. Home, and will contain :

No. II. POEMS AND CAROLS. By SELWYN IMAGE.

[Just published.

No. III. ESSAYS UPON MATTHEW ARNOLD. By AR
THUR GALTON.

No. IV. POEMS. By ERNEST Dow SON.

No. V. THE LETTERS AND PAPERS OF ADAM LE-

GENDRE.

Each volume will contain a new title-page and ornaments
designed by the Editor ; and the volumes of verse will be
uniform with " Diversi Colores."

HORTON (ALICE).

POEMS. [Shortly.

HUEFFER (OLIVER F. MADOX).

SONNETS AND POEMS. With a frontispiece. [Shortly.

12 The Publications of Elkin Mathews

HUGHES (ARTHUR).
See HAKE.

HUNT (LEIGH).

A VOLUME OF ESSAYS now collected for the first time.
Edited with a critical Introduction by JOHNSON
MONTAGU. [/« (he press.

IMAGE (SELWYN).

POEMS AND CAROLS. (Diversi Colores Series. — New
Volume). Title design by H. P. HORNE. Printed
on hand-made paper at the CHISWICK PRESS. i6mo.
5-f. net. [Just ready.

" Among the artists who have turned poets will shortly have to be reckoned Mr.
Selwyn Image. A volume of poems from his pen will be published by Mr. Elkin
Mathews before long. Those who are acquainted with Mr. Selwyn Image's work
will expect to find a real and deep poetic charm in this book." — Daily Chronicle.

"No one else could have done it (i.e., written ' Poems and Carols ') in just this
way, and the artist himself could have done it in no other way." " A remarkable
impress of personality, and ihis personality of singular rarity and interett. Every
piece is perfectly composed ; the ' mental cartooning,' to use Rossetti's phrase, has
been adequately done . . . an air of grave and homely order . . . a union of
quaint and subtly simple homeliness, with a somewhat abstract severity. ... It
is a new thing, the revelation of a new poet. . . . Here is a book which may be
trusted to outlive most contemporary literature." -Saturday Review.

" An intensely personal expression of a personality of singular charm, gravity,
fancifulness, and interest ; work which is alone among contemporary verse alike in
regard to substance and to form . . . comes with more true novtlty than any
book of verse published in England for some years." — Athcnaum.

"Some men seem to avoid fame as sedulously as the majority s?ek it. Mr. Selwyn
Image is one of these. He has achieved a charming fame by his very shyness and
mystery. His very name has a look ot having been designed by the Century Guild,
and it was certainly first published in The Century Guild Hobby Horse." — The Realm.

"In the tiny little volume of verse, 'Poems and Carols,' by Selwyn Image,
we discern a note of spontaneous inspiration, a delicate and graceiul fancy, and
considerable, but unequal, skill of versification. The Carols are skilful reproductions
of that rather archaic form of composition, devotional in tone and felicitous in
sentiment. Love and nature are the principal themes of the Poems. It is difficult
not to be hackneyed in the treatment of such themes, but Mr. Image successfully
overcomes the difficulty." — The Times.

" The Catholic movement in literature, a strong reality to-day in England as in
France, if working within narrow limits, has its newest interpretation in Mr. Selwyn
Image's ' Poems and Carols.' Of course the book is charming to look at and to
handle, since it is his. The Chiswick Press and Mr. Mathews have helped him to
realize his design." — The Sketch.

ISHAM FACSIMILE REPRINTS; Nos. III. and W.

See BRETON and SOUTHWELL.

%* New Elizabethan Literature at the British Museum, see
The Times, 31 August, 1894, also Notes and Queries, Sept., 1894.

Vigo Street, London, W.

JACOBI (C. T.}.

ON THE MAKING AND ISSUING OF BOOKS. With Nu
merous Ornaments. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. net. [All sold.

SOME NOTES ON BOOKS AND PRINTING : a Guide for
Authors and Others. 8vo. $s. net.

[By the Author of The Art of Thomas Hardy}.
JOHNSON (LIONEL}.

POEMS. With a title design and colophon by H. P. HORNE.

Printed at the CHISWICK PRESS, on hand-made paper.

Sq. post 8vo. 5-r- net-
Also, 25 special copies at 15^. net.
Boston : Copeland and Day.

"Mr Elkin Mathews announces some books of interest. One is a volume of
poems by Mr. Lionel Johnson, who has the making of a great critic. One can
always pick out his reviews in a London daily bv their sanity, clear sight, and high-
mindedness, as well as by the learning which unobtrusively runs like a golden thread
through them. His poems have the same lofty quality, and stand out in a time when
the minor muse amongst us is sick and morbid."— Baton Literary World.

JOHNSON (EFFIE).

IN THE FIRE, AND OTHER FANCIES. With frontispiece
by WALTER CRANE. Imperial i6mo. 35. 6d. net.

LAMB (CHARLES).

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. With an Introduction by

ANDREW LANG. Facsimile Reprint of the rare First

Edition. With 8 choice stipple engravings in brown

ink, after the original plates. Royal i6mo. y. 6d. net..

Transferred to the present Publisher.

LANG (ANDREW}.
See LAMB.

LETTERS TO LIVING ARTISTS.

Fcap. 8vo. 3.?. 6d. net.

LYNCH (ARTHUR}.

RELIGIO ATHLETE. [/« preparation^

14 The Publications of Elkin Mathews

MARSON (RE7. C. Z.).

A VOLUME OF SHORT STORIES. [In preparation.

MARSTON (PHILIP BOURKE).

A LAST HARVEST : LYRICS AND SONNETS FROM THE
BOOK OF LOVE. Edited, with Biographical Sketch,
by LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 500 copies. Printed
by MILLER & SON. Post 8vo. $s. net.

[ Very few remain*
Also 50 copies on hand-made L.P. los. 6d. net.

[ Very few remain*

"Among the sonnets with which the volume concludes, there are some fine
examples of a form of verse in which all competent authorities allow that Marstoa
excelled 'The Breadth and Beauty of the Spacious Night,' 'To All in Haven,'
'Friendship and Love,' 'Love's Deserted Palace' — these, to mention no others,
have the ' high seriousness ' which Matthew Arnold made ihe test of true poetry." —
Jthenrrum.

" Mrs. Chandler Moulton's biography is a beautiful piece of writing, and her
estimate of his work — a high estimate — is also a just one." — Black and Wbitt.

MASON (A. E. W.}.

: A TALE. [Shortly.

MUSA CATHOLICA.

Selected and Edited by MRS. WILLIAM SHARP.

[In preparation.
MURRAY (ALMA).

PORTRAIT AS BEATRICE CENCI. With Critical Notice
containing Four Letters from ROBERT BROWNING.
8vo. 2s. net.

NOEL (HON. RODEN).

POOR PEOPLE'S CHRISTMAS. Printed at the AYLESBURY
PRESS. 250 copies. i6mo. is. net.

[ Very few remain.

"Displays the author at his best Mr. Noel always has something

to say worth saying, and his technique— though like Browning, he is too intent upon
idea to bes;ow all due care upon form — is generally sufficient and sometimes
masterly. We hear too seldom from a poet of such deep and kindly sympathy." —
Sunday Times.

O> SULLIVAN (FINCENr).

POEMS. [/« preparation*.

Vigo Street, London, W. 15

PINKERTON (PERCY}.

GALEAZZO : a Venetian Episode, and other Poems. With
an Etched Frontispiece. i6mo. 55. net.

[ Very few remain.
Transferred by the Author to the present Publisher.

"This little book has individuality, the mark of a true poet, of a finely-gifted
nature." — MR. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS, in the^cadimy.

" It is but a pamphlet stitched in a white cover. Moreover, the book is almost
wholly concerned with Venice. This seems poor matter for poems ; and yet there is
great charm and skill in Mr. Pinkerton's landscapes in rhyme. They are the most
pleasant metrical impressions from nature one has seen for a long time." — MR.
ANDREW LANG, in Longman's Magazine.

POWELL (F. YORK).
See CORBIN.

PROBYN (MAY).

PANSIES : A BOOK OF POEMS. With a title-page and cover
design by MINNIE MATHEWS. Fcap.Svo. y. 6a.net.

"£>« man jar din, voyageur,

Vous me demandex une fleurl

Cucillex toujours — mais je n'ait

Voyageur^ qui des f insets."

"Miss Probyn's earlier volumes ' Poems,' and 'A Ballad of the Road,' were
published in 1881 and 1883. They attracted considerable attention, but have been
long out of print. Miss Probyn did not follow them up with other volumes, and
except in magazines and authologies, she has been silent for the last ten years. In
a review of * Poems ' the Saturday Review said it displayed "much brightness oi
fancy, united with excellent metrical science;" and The Scotsman pronounced it to be
"full of dainty charm, tender pathos, and true poetic quality." Miss Probyn is a
convert to Catholicism, and her new book will contain some fervent religious poetry,
often tinged with mediaeval mannerism. Her carols might have been written by
some very devout and simple monk of the middle ages.

RHYMERS' CLUB, THE SECOND BOOK OF THE.

Contributions by E. DOWSON, E. J. ELLIS, G. A. GREENE,
A. HILLIER, LIONEL JOHNSON, RICHARD LE GAL-
LIENNE, VICTOR PLARR, E. RADFORD, E. RHYS,

T. W. ROLLESTONE, ARTHUR SYMONS, J. TOD-

HUNTER, W. B. YEATS. Printed by MILLER & SON.
500 copies (of which 400 are for sale). i6mo. 55. net.
50 copies on hand-made L.P. 1 05. 6d. net.
New York : Dodd, Mead & Co.

"The work of twelve very competent verse writers, many of them not unknown
to fame. This form of publication is not a new departure exactly, but it is a recur
rence to the excellent fashion of the Elizabethan age, when 'England's Helicon,'

16 The Publications of Elkin Mathews

RHYMERS1 CLUB, SECOND BOOK OF THE— continued.

Davison's ' Poetical Rhapsody,' and ' Phoenix Nest,' with scores of other collections,
contained the best sones of the best song-writers of that tuneful epoch." — Black and
Whit,.

"The future of these thirteen writers, who have thus banded themselves
together, will be watched with interest. Already there is fulfilment in their work,
and there is much promise." Sftaker.

"In the intervals of Welsh rarebit and stout provided for them at the 'Cheshire
Cheese,' in Fleet Street, the members of the Rhymers' Club have produced some very-
pretty poems, which Mr. Elkin Mathews has issued in his notoriously dainty
manner." — Pall Mall Gaxette.

ROTHENSTE1N (WILL}.

OCCASIONAL PORTRAITS. With comments on the Per
sonages by various writers. [In preparation.

SCHAFF (DR. P.).

LITERATURE AND POETRY : Papers on Dante, Latin
Hymns, &c. Portrait and Plates. 100 copies only.
8vo. los. net. [ Very few remain.

SCULL (W. D.).

THE GARDEN OF THE MATCHBOXES, and other Stories.
Crown 8vo. 35, 6d. net. [/« preparation.

STRANGE (E. F.)

A BOOK OF THOUGHTS. [/« preparation.

[Isham Facsimile Reprint].
S[OUTHIVELL} (R[OBERT^\).

A FOVREFOVLD MEDITATION, OF THE FOURE LAST
THINGS. COMPOSED IN A DIUINE POEME. By R. S.
The author of S. Peter's complaint. London, 1606.
A Facsimile Reprint, with a Bibliographical Note by
CHARLES EDMONDS. 150 copies. Printed on hand
made paper at the CHISWICK PRESS. Roy. i6mo.

net.

Also 50 copies, large paper. net.

Facsimile reprint from the unique fragment discovered in the autumn of 1867 by
Mr. Charles Edmonds in a disused lumber room at Lamport Hall. Northants, and
lately purchased by the British Museum authorities. This fragment supplies the first
sheet of a previously unknown poem by Robert Southwell, the Roman Catholic poet,
whose religious fervour lends a pathetic beauty to everything tha> he wrote and
future editors of Southwell's works will find it necessary to give it close study. The
whole of the Poeii has been completed from two MS. copies, which differ in the
number of Stanzas.

Vigo Street, London, W. 17

SYMONDS (JOHN ADDINGTON).

IN THE KEY OF BLUE, AND OTHER PROSE ESSAYS.
With cover designed by C. S. RICKETTS. Printed at
the BALIANTYNE PRESS. Second Edition. Thick
cr. 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
New York : Macmillan 6° Co.

" The variety of Mr. Symonds' interests ! Here are criticisms upon the Venetian
Tiepolo, upon M. Zola, upon Mediaeval Norman Songs, upon Elizabethan lyrics,
•upon Plato's and Dante s ideals "f love; and not a sign anywhere, except may be in
the last, that he has more concern for, or knowledge of, one theme than another.
Add to thtse artistic themes the delighted records of English or Italian scenes, with
their rich beat tics of nature or of art, and the human passions that intUm them.
How joyous a sense of & eat possessions won at no man's hurt or loss must such a
man retain." — Daily Chronicle.

"Some of the essays are very charming, in Mr. Symonds best style, but the
first one, that which gives its name to the volume, is at least the most curious of tne
lot.' — Speakrr.

"The other essays are the work of a sound and sensible critic." — National
Observer.

"The literary essays are more restrained, and the prepared student will find them
full of illumination and charm, while the descriptive papers have the attractiveness
which Mr. Symonds always gives to wotk in this genre." — MR. JAS. ASHCROFT
NoBLE, in The Literary World.

TENNYSON (LORD).

See HALLAM, — VAN DYKE.

rODHUNTER (DR. JOHN).

A SICILIAN IDYLL. With a Frontispiece by WALTER
CRANE. Printed at the CHISWICK PRESS. 250 copies.
Imp. i6mo. $s.net. 50 copies hand-made L. P. Fcap.
4to. los. 6d net. [ Very few remain.

" He combines his notes skilfully, and puts his own voice, so to speak, into
them, and the music that results is sweet and of a pastoral tuneful'iess."— Speaker.

" The blank verse is the true verse of pastoral, quiet and scholarly, with frequent
touches of beauty. The echoes of Theocritus and of the classics at large are modest
and felicitous." — Anti-Jo.', bin.

" A charming little pastoral play in one act. The verse is singularly graceful,
and many bright gems of wit sparkle in the dialogues." — Literary World.

" Well worthy of admiration for its grace and delicate finish, its clearness, and
its compactness." — Atbenaum.

Also the following works by the same Author transferred
to the present Publisher, viz. : — LAURELLA, and other
Poems, 55. net. — ALCESTIS, a Dramatic Poem, 45. net.
— A STUDY OF SHELLEY, $s. 6d. net. — FOREST SONGS,
and other Poems, 3^. net. — THE BANSHEE, 3^. net. —
HELENA IN TROAS, zs. 6d. net.

1 8 The Publications of Elkin Mathews

TYNAN (KATHARINE).
See HiNKSON.

VAN DYKE (HENRY).

THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. Third Edition, enlarged.
Cr. 8vo. 5-r. f>>i. net.

The additions consist of a Portrait, Two Chapters, and the
Bibliography expanded. The Laureate himself gave valuable
aid in correcting various details.

"Mr. Elltin Mathrws publishes a new edition, revised and enlarged, of that
•excellent woik, 'The Poetry of Tennyson,' by Henry Van Dyke. The adlitions
are considerable. It is extremeiy interesting to go over the bibliographical notes
to see the contemptuous or, at best, contemptuously patronising tone of the reviewers
in the early thirties gradually turning to civility, to a loud chorus of applause." —
Anti-JatMn.

" Considered as an aid to the study of the Laureate, this labour of love merits
warm commendation. Its grouping of the poems, its bibliography and chronology,
its catalogue of Biblical allusion and quotations, are each and all snbstantial accessories
to the knowledge of the autnor." — DR. RICHARD GARNETT, in the Illustrated
London News.

WATSON (E. H. LACON).

THE UNCONSCIOUS HUMOURIST, AND OTHER ESSAYS.

\In preparation.

\Mr. Wedmore's Short Stories. New and Uniform Issue.
Crown 8z>0., each Volume 3^. 6d. net.]

WEDMORE (FREDERICK).

PASTORALS OF FRANCE. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo.
35. 6d. net. \_Ready.

New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.

" A writer in whom delicacy of literary touch is united with an almost disem
bodied fineness of sentiment." — Atltentzum.

" Of singular quaintness and beauty." — Contemforarji Re-view.

"The stories are exquisitely told." — The World.

" Delicious idylls, written with Mr. Wedmore's fascinating command of
sympathetic incident, and with his characteristic charm of style." — Illustrated London
News.

"The publication of the 'Pastorals' maybe said to have revealed, not only anew
talent, but a new literary genre. . . The charm of the writing never fails." — Bookman

" In their simplicity, their tenderness, their quietude, their truthfulness to the
remote lift that they depict, ' Pastorals of France ' are almost perfect." — Sfectattr.

Vigo Street, London, W.

WEDMORE (FREDERICK)— continued.

RENUNCIATIONS. Third Edition. With a Portrait by
J. J. SHANNON. Cr. 8vo. 3^. 6d. net. [Ready.

New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.

" These are clever studies in polite realism. ' — Athenaum.

" They are quite unusual. The picture of Richard Pelse, with his one moment
of romance, is exquisite." — St. Jamis'sGaxette.

" 'The Chemist in thebuburbs,' in * Renunciations,' is a pure joy. . . . The
story of Richard ^else's life is told with a power not unworthy of the now disabled
hand that drew for us the lonely old age of M. Parent."— MR. TRAILL, in The
New Review.

"The book belongs to the highest order of imaginative work. ' Renunciations
are studies from the life — picture:, which make plain to us some of the innermost
workings of the heart." — Academy.

" Mr. Wedmore has gamed for himself an enviable reputation. His style has
distinction, has form. He has the poet's secret now to bring out the beauty of
common things. . . * The Chemist in the Suburbs,' in ' Renunciations,' is his
masterpiece." — Saturday Re-view.

" We congratulate Mr. Wedmore on his vivid, wholesome, and artistic work, so
full of suppressed feeling and of quiet strength." — Standard.

ENGLISH EPISODES.

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"In 'English Episodes' we have another proof of Mr. Wedmore's uni

lines, and deserves to Be a classic.' —World.

'" English Episodes' are worthy successors of 'Pastorals' and 'Renunciations,'
and with them should represent a permanent addition to Literature." — Academy.

There may also be had the Collected Edition (1893) of ' ' Pastorals
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Mr. Wicksteed seeks to do justice to what are the supreme elements of the Commedia^
iu spiritual significance, and the depth and insight of its moral teaching." — Guardian.

-2O The Publications of Elkin Mathews

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WHISPER ! A Volume of Verse. Fcap. 8vo. buckram.
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Transferred by the Author to the present Publisher.

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•can be read by any lover of poetry without definite pleasure, and eve-yone who reads
either of them without is, we venture to say, unable to appreciate that play of light
and shadow on the Heart ofman which is of the very essence of poetry."— Sftctatar.

" The book includes, to my humble taste, many very charming pieces, musical,
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agreeable volume of verse, successful up to the measure of its aims and ambitions." —
MR. ANDREW LANG, in Longman's Magaxine.

TEATS (W. B.}.

THE SHADOWY WATERS. A Poetic Play. [/« preparation.

THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS (Poems), [fa preparation.

"MR. ELKIN MATHEWS holds likewise the only copies of the
following Books printed at the Private Press of the REV.
C. HENRY DANIEL, Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford.

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Whatman paper. 100 copies. Five Parts. Fcap. 410.
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HTMNI ECCLESUE CPRA HENRICI DANIEL.
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C65

Corbin, John

The Elizabethan Hamlet

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Full text of "The Elizabethan Hamlet: a study of the sources and of Shakspere's environment, to show that the mad scenes had a comic aspect now ignored. With a prefatory note by F. York Powell"

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